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Innovations, Scrabble and logarithms

The Queen, the Mad and the Tree (3)
Reminder of previous episodes ( here): technological innovations and the ramifications of living are strangely similar. The time between two major developments are becoming shorter and seem to follow a logarithmic progression. Regardless of how we represent such developments-graph, or other tree-form obtained is always the same, whatever the scale chosen. So these are fractals! To satiate fans of Da Vinci Code ... Admittedly, this is not a scoop to say that the history of technological progress is accelerating as time goes on, but it's more surprising to the same conclusion for the chronologies of living:

Source: Chaline, Nottale and Grou ( here )

I just found a simpler explanation to this phenomenon as that of jackrabbits my previous post, reading a good book by Jared Diamond which I will talk in a future post.

Printing, invented 3700 years ago ...
Reflection Diamond takes as its starting point discovery of a hard clay at Phaistos on Crete, dated to 1700 BC. JC (the photo comes from Wikipedia ). This disc is covered with over two hundred hieroglyphs (45 different) printed using punches. These punches are so carefully designed terrain is assumed that they were used several times. It would therefore be in the presence of the first registration made with movable and reusable. A real work of printing, 2500 years before the invention of printing in China and 3000 years before that of Europe! This finding is a puzzle: why did it take wait so long for this invention is then used by other people?

Diamond's answer is actually quite obvious: no innovation, as ingenious as it is, can not spread if it does not built with existing technologies. There was no ink in Crete, no paper, no press, no metal or alphabetic order for this invention "take." And since only a few scribes jealous of their power knew at the time to read and write, there was no need for massive distribution of information. The print wait so that all ingredients are combined Gutenberg in Europe to find its growth in 1455 and dramatically alter the course of Western history.

Behind every invention, an army of unsung precursor
In support of this rule, it suffices to note that great discoveries are rarely the result of one man. Most inventors are particularly refined and adapted finds that the precursors had imagined before them. The first steam engine, not date of James Watt, inventor's official, but of Heron of Alexandria and its amazing Eolipyle !
Thomas Edison patented the modern version of the light bulb and that Samuel Morse's electric telegraph, but in both cases, their inventions have been preceded by many similar or competing processes (see for example the history of lighting and that of the telegraph ). course there is no denying the contribution of these great inventors, but we must admit that their success is mainly due to the fact that their society was ripe to exploit their innovations. The real geniuses, as proto-printer Phaistos, really have ideas ahead of their time are most likely doomed to oblivion. If Leonardo had not been famous for his paintings, which he had not imagined the ancestor of the helicopter ?

An innovation will succeed so that when it coincides with a good technological background, ready to make it fruitful. A bit like a new chemical reagent, which produces an interesting effect that when incorporated into the right ingredients.


Innovation: a matter of combinatorics?
Innovation is therefore the art of combining clever ideas or technologies. Indeed, creativity is not it precisely the ability to associate two concepts that are not used to be? This intimate relationship between innovations and combinations may explain the cumulative nature of technological change, whose effects are multiplied rather they add up. The more we ad'ingrédients at its disposal, the greater the chances of finding suitable mixture to a new reagent. The more a company has accumulated technology, the more it can afford to take advantage an innovation. The technological advances therefore cascade, an innovation led to another in times shorter and shorter.

[For skeptics only trying to model that. Suppose there are n technologies and innovations that the field is proportional to the number of possible combinations of these technologies. There are then 2 n possible combinations (see demo here ). Additional technology doubles the number of combinations so the field of innovation].

The invention of the internet, for example, has taken its magnitude with the advent of personal computers and the democratization of broadband. In turn, the Internet has enabled the invention of new forms of entertainment, commerce, communications, means of payment which in turn have led to other innovations etc..

Scrabble Life
There is probably something similar in the large Lego's lifetime. When anatomically successful innovation (a new organization plan to the Cambrian, for example), it paves the way for a blossoming of recombination that leads each new species.
There is a difference size with technological progress: after a certain time, which varies by species or families, the pace of innovation slows side more and then stops. Some species like the coelacanth (source: cliff1066 ™ ) evolves more visible for hundreds of millions of years. What's going on? I deliver to a chimera comments Xochipillesque:
Contrary to technological progress that knows as the limit as imposed by our culture, the evolution of life, is itself, subject to many physical limitations: in terms of size, weight and proportion, for example, but there are many others. What is happening to me the same thing at Scrabble:

Initially, the combinations available are very few numerous then put each word increases the range of possibilities. But as the game is not infinite, the game "closes" gradually and opportunities for dazzling combinations are scarce. Sometimes, some misplaced words "close the game "and suddenly reduce the possibilities of playing. There comes a time when nobody can play, even if there are letters in the pile. Similarly, one can imagine a great innovation multiplies first anatomical possibilities of evolution of a branch, and then they gradually become scarcer as all its derivatives have been explored anatomical viable. The coelacanth is virtually the super-triple-word account "stuck in the bottom right of the plate ...

Scrabbles From everywhere ...
Cultural innovation Would she rather Scrabble or rather Lego? Paradoxically, it seems to me that it is rather Scrabble, because of cultural constraints that delimit the gameboard Jazz for example, has paved the way for many schools that have multiplied until we gradually explored all combinations culturally interesting. No doubt he will wait an additional ingredient (technological or cultural) that abound (maybe?) New styles.

Source: Article by Ivan Brissaud ( here )

If my hypothesis holds up, it is not surprising to find so many human phenomena, physical or biological obeying laws log-periodic: it gets each time a dynamic combinatorial is at work and its development is hindered by a constraint. This "scale invariance" is ubiquitous in nature is of course fascinating and one can be tempted to seek the universal rule of the natural order as some researchers . I think that making a lot of credit to combinatorial analysis. I remain, however, always impressed by the beauty of the result, obtained from those elementary rules of Scrabble.

Sources:
From inequality among societies by Jared Diamond

Related posts:
Innovation and Evolution: A History of jackrabbits?
The Queen, the Mad and the Tree