What is the best time to plant a tree?
A popular answer to this question is that the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, and the second-best time is now.
This is often claimed to be an ancient Chinese proverb. Or an African proverb. It is unlikely to be either of these.
And obviously we are not supposed to take this proverb literally. Because if the best time was twenty years ago, the second-best time would be nineteen years ago.
But instead of interpreting this logically, we are presumably supposed to interpret it as a motivational statement. Don't waste time regretting that you didn't plant a tree twenty years ago, act now to make sure you don't have similar regrets in twenty years' time. (Do real Chinese proverbs do motivational statements? I suspect not.)
In his new book, The Inevitable, Kevin Kelly talks about the opportunities for internet entrepreneurs thirty years ago. "Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an ambitious entrepreneur back in 1985 at the dawn of the internet?"
He then looks forward to the middle of the century. "If we could climb into a time machine, journey 30 years into the future,
and from that vantage look back to today, we’d realize that most of the
greatest products running the lives of citizens in 2050 were not
invented until after 2016."
In other words, for an internet start-up the second-best time is now.
By the way, I'm not the first person to use the pun about 'boughing' to the inevitable. For example, @rcolvile used it in the context of ash dieback. "Half the trees in the country were going to be torn down. He’d already had to veto a particularly insensitive press release describing him as 'ashen-faced' about the situation, but 'boughing to the inevitable'. Meanwhile, Google is asking me if I meant 'coughing to the inevitable'. Thanks Google, it's always useful to spot something you haven't yet mastered.
KK.org, The Inevitable
Kevin Kelly, The Internet Is Still at the Beginning of Its Beginning (Huffington Post, 6 June 2016)
On The Best Time to Plant a Tree (Reddit)
Robert Colvile, Friends: The One with the Guy in a Yellow Tie (Telegraph, 3 November 2012)
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Friday, July 15, 2016
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Evolution or Revolution 2
@ceciiil asserts a difference between @oscarberg and @bduperrin in his post E2.0 Evangelists : the Revolutionaries and the Evolutionaries (March 24, 2010).
I'm not convinced by this distinction. Cecil says that revolutionaries believe in disruption and evolutionaries believe in incremental change. But these beliefs are not mutually exclusive. In a simple linear world perhaps, incremental change is unlikely to be disruptive. But in a complex dynamic world, incremental change can often trigger disruptive change. (There is a branch of mathematics called Catastrophe Theory, dedicated to the study of such non-linear phenomena. And Hegelians define dialectics as the transformation of quantity into quality - see for example Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels.)
So I have long argued that the difference between evolution and revolution is largely a difference of perspective. Not either/or but both/and.
The following is an extract from Chapter 5 of my book on the Component-Based Business (Springer 2001).
A sudden change is often described as a revolution. A progressive change over time is often described as an evolution.
Even in biology, the distinction between sudden change and slow change is problematic. If you had been sitting on the seashore many millions of years ago, you might have seen the first sea creatures crawl onto land, and this might seem a sudden and dramatic event, from a human perspective. However, a squid might see this event as relatively unimportant, merely as one of many tentative explorations by a few creatures at the margins of the oceans, or as a fairly routine extension to previous innovations within a large and diverse community of sea creatures.
Many present-day commentators characterize the emergence of computing, or the Internet, or E-Business, as revolutionary. From one perspective, these appear to be previously unseen phenomena, emerging suddenly into public awareness from the obscurity of some other domain. From another perspective, the same phenomena appear to be a natural consequence of a large number of independently planned and executed moves by a large number of engineers, businessmen and others, whose origins can be traced back to innovations made years ago, decades ago, perhaps even centuries ago.
Thus the same phenomenon can be described as revolutionary AND evolutionary at the same time, depending on where you’re standing, and the amount of history you’re prepared to absorb.
If I describe a change as revolutionary, I’m inviting you to concentrate your attention on certain aspects of the change. I want you to see it as a dramatic break with the past, with sweeping implications across a fairly wide domain.
If I describe a change as evolutionary, I’m inviting you to take a different perspective. I want you to be aware of the links between the past and the future, and the extent to which previous patterns and innovations are being adapted and reused.
Some people feel safer with evolutionary descriptions of change, while others feel happier with revolutionary descriptions. As a manager or consultant, I might feel the need to motivate some people, while reassuring others. Sometimes I want to emphasize continuity; at other times, I want to emphasize novelty. At least from a logical point of view, I’m not necessarily contradicting myself if I describe things differently for different stakeholders – although there may be ethical or practical difficulties if the descriptions diverge too greatly.
Related Posts
Evolution or Revolution (May 2006)
I'm not convinced by this distinction. Cecil says that revolutionaries believe in disruption and evolutionaries believe in incremental change. But these beliefs are not mutually exclusive. In a simple linear world perhaps, incremental change is unlikely to be disruptive. But in a complex dynamic world, incremental change can often trigger disruptive change. (There is a branch of mathematics called Catastrophe Theory, dedicated to the study of such non-linear phenomena. And Hegelians define dialectics as the transformation of quantity into quality - see for example Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels.)
So I have long argued that the difference between evolution and revolution is largely a difference of perspective. Not either/or but both/and.
The following is an extract from Chapter 5 of my book on the Component-Based Business (Springer 2001).
A sudden change is often described as a revolution. A progressive change over time is often described as an evolution.
Even in biology, the distinction between sudden change and slow change is problematic. If you had been sitting on the seashore many millions of years ago, you might have seen the first sea creatures crawl onto land, and this might seem a sudden and dramatic event, from a human perspective. However, a squid might see this event as relatively unimportant, merely as one of many tentative explorations by a few creatures at the margins of the oceans, or as a fairly routine extension to previous innovations within a large and diverse community of sea creatures.
Many present-day commentators characterize the emergence of computing, or the Internet, or E-Business, as revolutionary. From one perspective, these appear to be previously unseen phenomena, emerging suddenly into public awareness from the obscurity of some other domain. From another perspective, the same phenomena appear to be a natural consequence of a large number of independently planned and executed moves by a large number of engineers, businessmen and others, whose origins can be traced back to innovations made years ago, decades ago, perhaps even centuries ago.
Thus the same phenomenon can be described as revolutionary AND evolutionary at the same time, depending on where you’re standing, and the amount of history you’re prepared to absorb.
If I describe a change as revolutionary, I’m inviting you to concentrate your attention on certain aspects of the change. I want you to see it as a dramatic break with the past, with sweeping implications across a fairly wide domain.
If I describe a change as evolutionary, I’m inviting you to take a different perspective. I want you to be aware of the links between the past and the future, and the extent to which previous patterns and innovations are being adapted and reused.
Some people feel safer with evolutionary descriptions of change, while others feel happier with revolutionary descriptions. As a manager or consultant, I might feel the need to motivate some people, while reassuring others. Sometimes I want to emphasize continuity; at other times, I want to emphasize novelty. At least from a logical point of view, I’m not necessarily contradicting myself if I describe things differently for different stakeholders – although there may be ethical or practical difficulties if the descriptions diverge too greatly.
Related Posts
Evolution or Revolution (May 2006)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)