Applying Ancient Technologies
This week, I was listening to an episode of People I Mostly Admire in which the host, Steven Levitt, interviewed scientist Neil Shubin about his discoveries on evolution and how we got into his work. It’s a great episode and you can listen to it here.
However, there was one thing in the episode that caught my attention. Dr. Shubin was asked how fish were able able to grow adaptations to help them walk on land as those adaptations would disadvantage them as they grew and eventually kill off the species. Shubin explained that those adaptations at each step were advantaging a species in the moment and it was only by chance that the same adaptations were able to transfer to walking on land.
To paraphrase him, he said that evolution was ancient technologies applied to new situations. Fish in low oxygen water would grab a bubble of air from the surface and dive back down. Over time, this led to the development of lungs.
Thinking about our current state, the giant leaps often happen when “ancient” technologies get applied to new situations. Sometimes, the markets aren’t ready but when they are, the same product or feature can be deployed. One needs to be at the ready to deploy these technologies off the shelf when the timing hits.
Digital formats for music were around for many years but it wasn’t until high speed Internet it when they could become revolutionary. What ancient technology do you have ready?
