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Are there ideas in IT that must die for progress to be made?
Max Planck wryly observed that scientific progress is often less meritocracy and more Lord of the Flies:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Playing off this insight is a thought provoking book collection of responses to a question posed on the Edge: This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress. From the book blurb some of the ideas that should transition into the postmortem are: Jared Diamond explores the diverse ways that new ideas emerge; Nassim Nicholas Taleb takes down the standard deviation; Richard Thaler and novelist Ian McEwan reveal the usefulness of "bad" ideas; Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior.
Let’s get edgy: Are there ideas that should die in IT?
What ideas do you think should pass into the great version control system called history? What ideas if garbage collected would allow us to transmigrate into a bright shiny new future? Be as deep and bizarre as you want. This is the time for it.
I have two: Winner Takes All and The Homogeneity Principle.
Winner Takes All
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