Tinkering with old cars
In 1987, the Santa Fe Institute and Citicorp lined up ten leading economists to talk to ten leading physicists, biologists, and computer scientists. Luminaries on both sides.
The physical scientists were astounded by the economists' old-fashioned equilibrium-based approach to problems. One of the physical scientists later said that talking to them was like taking a trip to Cuba, where the streets are full of old cars. The cars can be kept going by hard work and ingenuity, using salvaged parts. But the entire system is out of touch with the modern world.
It's a great image, isn't it? An entire discipline, cut off from the rest of the world by a sort of self-created intellectual embargo. Very skilled minds can be hard at work, fixing the Packards with care and thoroughness. And the cars will continue to work for a very long time.
As communications converge, continuing to have categories like “broadcast,” “radio,” “cable,” and “telephony” makes less and less sense — these categories are like the Packards. We can tinker with them, believe in them, but the world will have moved on. The system to be dealt with (all-IP, all-online) is a complex, evolving environment, characterized by nonlinear dynamics and self-created order. How do you regulate that?
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