The subject is how tools evolve in step with those who use them and the technological plateaus that tool use creates.
The business and economic concept of this plateau is a market. The automobile, for example, has done more to shape the civilized surface of our globe than much that came before it. We didn't create oceans upon which ships could sail but we did create roads upon which our cars could drive (yes, I'm ignoring the Suez and Panama Canals, etc). There have been many improvements to the automobile since it was first introduced and all these improvements didn't change what we recognize as "automobile".
You could see the first automobile and you'd probably say, "Wow, look at the antique car." Likewise, someone who purchased one of the first automobiles could look at a car manufactured in 2007 and say, "Wow, what kind of car is that?" This is because all improvements to the automobile have been sustaining technology or sustaining innovation, meaning they are refinements to what a car is rather than redefining what personal transportation is (I mourn the Dymaxion but not "It". By the way, no one who contacted me about Enterprise 2.what? could remember what "It" was or is. So much for that company's marketing dept. "It" is the Segway and if you didn't know then the point is made).
Eventually the edge of the plateau is reached. Most people think of the edge as the point where the plateau falls off. Toolmakers think of the edge as where the rise to the next plateau begins and if you read Mr. Machine and Childhood Imagination you have an idea how NextStage thinks of plateaus.
(you know what comes here)
Links for this arc:
- Articles on noisy data affecting analysis:
- The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading
- Design and Purpose links:
- Semphonics Functionalism Paper
- IMediaConnectin Columns
- Chapter 7, "Experience versus Expectation", Reading Virtual Minds
- FindMeFaster
- The Noisy Data Arc
- Posts on new web technologies:
- Posts mentioning WAA:
- Web Analytics Association Links:
- Web Analytics Vendors mentioned in this arc:
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