Most of us are aware, vaguely at least, that technology goes through cycles of incremental innovation and disruptive revolution. In our lifetimes, we see the process unfold many times over, and notice how the emphasis in both the outward design and practical approach of technology changes. What is less apparent, however, is that these cycles are fractal in nature, and if we examine them over the entire history of civilization, we find they can be broadly classified into a progression of stages: Experimental, Classic, Baroque, and Degenerate.
I. Experimental
The first stage in a technological cycle is characterized by a wide diversity of approaches and proliferation of styles. Different ideas have not yet been sufficiently tested in practice, so many prototypes and initial product lines are inefficient, uneconomical, aesthetically abhorrent, dysfunctional, or even dangerous. When an entirely new sector, industry, or type of technology is created, this is how it begins, and it remains in this stage until competitively superior approaches are able to achieve dominance and become standard.
For very simple, ancient technologies, the Experimental stage would last centuries or even millennia and involve a very small amount of diversity due to several factors: (1)Lack of understanding of scientific principles and experimental methodology; (2)rigid adherence to tradition and received wisdom limiting the willingness of craftsmen, architects, and artisans to innovate; (3)fatalism as the prevailing social attitude, with no articulated principle of progress; and (4)the relative simplicity of the technologies wouldn't allow for many obvious alternative approaches.
Example E1:
The stone tools above were used by Neanderthals in Gibraltar approximately 26,000 years ago. There aren't a lot of different ways one can take a rock and make an edge on it, so this is an extreme example of an early technology that didn't have much room for immediate innovation. Nevertheless, we can classify it in the Experimental category because an oddly shaped, hand-held rock shard with a brittle edge is nowhere near to being an efficient technology. It is not optimized at all - neither the cutting edge nor the grip, such as it even exists, exhibit a high level of development.
Such tools were the prototypes not only of knives, but of axe blades, spearheads, and arrowheads. Over time, they diverged down these different paths and were optimized for different functions: Knives were crafted for strength and had handles; axe blades were crafted for heft and impact; and spear and arrowheads were made light and aerodynamic.
Example E2:
This is the Pyramid of Djoser, the first Egyptian pyramid, constructed circa 2649-2575 BC by Imhotep during the Old Kingdom. It was constructed when Imhotep got the idea of stacking scaled versions of an existing one-level Egyptian funerary building, a mastaba, one atop the other.
There has definitely been significant erosion of the original structure, but it clearly was just a bunch of mastabas stacked on top of each other. Pyramids throughout the region, particularly in Nubia and Kush, experimented with shallower or sharper angles of ascent, while those in Egypt progressively converged on a standard angle and increased the number of steps and the smoothness of the sides over time.
Example E3:
Stonehenge (3rd Millennium BC) is an example of Experimental large-scale post-and-lintel architecture - that is, buildings constructed on the principle of two vertical uprights with a perpendicular cross-beam lying over them. The importance of experimentation with this principle cannot be overstated, since prior to its development - and this happened at different times in different places - people mostly relied on haphazardly leaning building materials against each other or against rock walls to make huts, temples, and funeral cairns.
Example E4:
Although it was exclusively a battlefield device for centuries, the chariot is the prototype of all horse-drawn transportation technology, presaging not only larger and more ornate versions of chariots, but also horse-drawn carts and carriages. It may seem strange that it never occurred to the civilizations who originated the technology - Assyria and Egypt - to apply it toward regular activities like plowing fields, transporting goods, and non-martial transportation of officials, but ancient European civilizations ultimately did make that leap, creating horse-drawn plows and carts that evolved into carriages.
Part of the reason for the delay was that axles were originally wood, so the lack of a suspension meant that a large bump in the road could literally cause the entire works to shatter. Egypt improved on this design by adding some metal parts, but it was not until Roman times that the technology was sufficiently robust for horse-drawn carts to be used with regularity. Until then, material transportation was overwhelmingly accomplished by directly loading goods on to horses, mules, or camels.
Example E5:
These matchlock muskets are from the 17th century, but we could just as easily look at guns from the 15th through the 18th centuries, as the Experimental development of firearms spanned that period. Until the 19th century, there was little standardization or efficiency in the design of firearms, and basic elements of the technology (e.g., firing mechanism, barrel characteristics, etc.) remained very diverse.
Guns initially fired by having the user physically pick up a lit match or cord and light the powder in the firing pan. This evolved into the matchlock musket, where a cord was attached to a lever connected to the trigger, and a soldier anticipating battle would light the cord. In fact, this lever mechanism is the technological origin of the trigger - the same function could just as easily have been accomplished by a sliding thumb-plate or other approach.
Alongside and then superseding matchlock muskets were wheel-lock muskets that used a spring-loaded metal wheel to generate sparks into the firing pan, and then flintlock muskets that carried a piece of flint on a spring-loaded firing mechanism that would strike it and generate sparks that way. Meanwhile, there was a vast diversity of barrel designs and mechanical details, making standardization difficult and efficient mass-production nearly impossible. A related anecdote tells how the Spanish Armada was defeated in part because its cannons were so non-standardized that it was never certain a given cannonball would fit in, or fire effectively (or safely) from, a given cannon, so misfires and explosions were commmonplace.
However, it is interesting to note that at this point in history - the 15th through 18th centuries - progress is now accelerating to the point that a major technological design cycle is occurring roughly once a century, whereas in Roman times it was happening over several centuries, and prior to that over millennia.
Example E6:
By the time the horseless carriage is invented, design cycles are occurring roughly twice a century, and that timeline is continuously accelerating. In the initial decades of the technology, from the 1890s to the late 1910s, wildly divergent approaches are taken: Some are steam-powered, some gasoline-powered, some electrical, and some are powered by kerosene or other fuels.
Some have a horizontal steering wheel, some have a vertical steering wheel, some have handlebars, some have hand levers, etc. Some have various foot pedals for acceleration or braking, while others have levers or buttons, hand-brakes, dials, or wheels, etc. And most of them belched acrid smoke for pedestrians to enjoy as they passed. Safety was nonexistent: There were no seatbelts, and if you pushed the engine past its limits, there was a chance it would explode.
The automobile resulted from the convergence of a highly efficient technology - the carriage - with a still Experimental one, the heat engine. Wheels, axles, suspensions, and other basic structural elements of the carriage portion of the horseless carriage were well-developed, but there were so many possible methods of powering, starting, steering, braking, and all other elements of the engine and "horseless" part of the technology that they proliferated and gained little individual traction until standardization began to occur.
Example E7:
Aircraft evolution began about a decade after the automobile, and was even more diverse since it could not rely on existing experience. Monoplanes, biplanes, triplanes, or configurations with even more wings were experimented with, as were corkscrews, helicopters, ornithopters, and many other bizarre approaches.
Some configurations had the propellers in front, some had them in back; some had them on the wings; some placed them in line with the fusilage. Meanwhile the same engine debates that were still somewhat occurring in the automobile industry also happened with aircraft, although the significant power requirements of flight narrowed the choices relatively early.
Although steady progress was made toward achieving standards, and relatively functional aircraft were being produced well before then, we can say that the airplane remained in the Experimental stage of development until the advent of commercial jet aircraft in the 1950s.
Example E8:
Although there were standard mainframes for businesses, government agencies, and military applications in the latter decades of the era, the electronic computer had remained an essentially experimental device since its creation in World War 2 well into the early 1980s. Standards had become strong within individual companies (such as IBM) by the 1960s, but there was not a great deal of standardization across the industry because the product was relatively low-volume.
Basic hardware components such as transistors and storage media (tape reels) were standard, but not much else beyond that - an organization's internal staff would have to configure the machine according to their own architectures, and then program their own operating system and applications using the language of their choice. In some cases firms would choose to create their own proprietary language, and the environment was relatively hostile to networking and collaboration.
Example E9:
At the point the internet enters the scene, development stages have accelerated to about once a decade. Of course, the photo above is from the middle period of the internet's Experimental phase, when there are early commercial browsers to explore it despite there being relatively little content. There were, however, initially a proliferation of protocols requiring different programs and not working well with some operating systems: You needed one program for email, another to chat, another to access databases, a program to look at images, etc. etc. And there were several programs and protocols competing to achieve the same service. The technology remained like this until the mid-1990s when software standardization and browser technology came into its own.
Example E10:
Photovoltaic technology has been around for several decades, but only now is it even entering the active Experimental stage of development. A vast array of manufacturing techniques, materials, architectures, and modular configurations are gearing up to compete in the marketplace to dominate the future of humanity's energy infrastructure.
Some are based on the more conventional polycrystalline silicon; some are thin-film, high-efficiency panels that use novel combinations of metals such as copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) or cadmium telluride; some rely on concentrators to focus sunlight on small, high-efficiency PV materials while others rely on bulk quantities of low-cost, low-efficiency materials; and some are optimized for modular use by homes and businesses, while others are intended for huge facilities. Some are even printed on flexible rolls of sheets. There is no way to know who will win or what will follow from it, and that is terribly exciting.
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II. Classic
The second stage in a technological cycle, Classic, is characterized by standardization, stable configuration, a regular progression of incremental improvements that simplify the system rather than complexifying it, and an aesthetic sensibility focused on simplicity, balance, grandeur, and wholeness.
Due to the slowness with which human technology initially progressed, the very first Classic period in technology did not occur for tens of millennia after the first hominids began using stone tools:
Example C1:
These 12,000-year-old spear points belonged to the Clovis culture of North America, and exhibit something close to formal perfection for a Stone Age implement. Their symmetry, sharpness, and aerodynamic shape indicate advanced craftsmanship with a keen eye for the qualities that would a spear point most effective, and there are even key artistic flourishes as well: Note the subtle curvature, which isn't necessary at all, but makes it look quite impressive without compromising any functionality.
From the advent of such practices onward, Classic periods in weaponry all over the world would exhibit similar design values: Perfected function with no aesthetic compromises. These values would have to be rediscovered when weaponry transitioned to metals in the Copper Age (5th millennium BC), as metalworking involves a very different skillset.
Example C2:
This is the Great Giza Pyramid of Khufu (c. 2560 BC), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and remains a monument to perfection despite the ravages of time. As impressive as the remaining structure is today, at original completion it had a perfectly flush, smooth stone facade. What we see today are merely the stones that underlay it. Its geometry is oddly mesmerizing, and bears some relationship to the mathematical Golden Ratio.
Modern architects have often imitated the geometry of the Great Pyramids of Giza, although always on a smaller scale, precisely because of how compelling the shape is. Sharper angles tend to look spiky and aggressive, at least to my perspective, and shallower ones tend to look stumpy and squat, but at the specific angle of the Giza Pyramids, the result appears profoundly balanced and awesome. All else being equal, it is a perfected form.
Example C3:
The ancient Greeks perfected the colonnade that evolved from post-and-lintel architecture, and its purest incarnation is the Parthenon. Renowned throughout the world for the simple grandeur, balance, and strength of its design, it embodies the three chief virtues preached in Hellenic philosophy: Know thyself, Man Is The Measure of All Things, and Moderation in All Things.
It neither supplicates to the heavens nor cries defiantly to them, but simply stands a mighty monument to humanity. The Doric columns themselves are examples of the simplicity and elegant functionality of Classic design, and in fact the era of Greek history in which the Parthenon was built is (quite rightly) known by historians as Classical.
Example C4:
The horse-and-buggy (including carriages) is the Classic perfection of the technological arc that began with the chariot, and encapsulates multiple developments occurring over millennia and, in the later stages, centuries.
Among the advances: The horseshoe, greatly extending the endurance and range of horses; advanced rigging, keeping the horse reliably attached to the buggy and yet able to move efficiently; metal axles, increasing resistance against rough roads; spring suspension, both dampening vibrations that might damage the wheels and structure and providing comfort to the riders; an elevated driver's seat positioned to best monitor and control the horse(s); comfortable passenger seats; and a pivoting front axle attached to the horse, so that the buggy can turn corners without tipping over (a big problem with ancient carts and medieval carriages).
All of the mechanical advances that went into the perfection of the buggy (i.e., those not associated with the horse) were leveraged by the auto industry with the creation of the horseless carriage, and its development into the automobile would have taken significantly longer without the Classic buggy as a basis. Simple, elegant, robust, appealingly designed, and affordable to more than the rich.
Example C5:
I personally despise firearms, but from a technological standpoint it doesn't get any better than the AK-47 (invented in 1947, go figure). There are faster weapons, more powerful weapons, more compact weapons, and more advanced weapons, but there are none with a more optimal combination of power, balance, economics, simplicity, robustness, and what passes for aesthetic appeal in an instrument of catastrophe.
The key advances from the musket days that went into making this supreme agent of chaos are as follows: Cartridge bullets with their own internal gun powder allow for quicker loading; bullet magazines allowed for even quicker loading; a pistol grip beneath the stock allows for better control; automatic fire allows a soldier to sweep an area with gunfire; and I am sure many more obscure developments. While it doesn't exactly suit my own aesthetic sensibilities, its outward design has a self-contained logic to it that cannot be argued with, and clearly deserves to be labeled Classic technology.
Example C6:
Automobiles entered their Classic era, at least in the United States, beginning in the 1930s and continued until the early 1970s. The car above is a 1966 Ford Mustang, widely considered the pinnacle of American automotive achievement (although I'm sure some gearheads will vehemently disagree). Cars built in this era had a sense of freedom and unmistakable, decade-specific zeitgeist about them. They were not merely a means of transportation, but a declaration of something personal and cultural. Designs were intended to give the impression of speed and smoothness, and to emphasize the liberating aspects of owning an automobile.
Unlike today in many parts of the country, cars back then were far less often sources of frustration and isolation, but rather of liberation: With the advent of the Interstate Highway system, once you had a car you could now go anywhere in the country. Thus, in Classic American car culture, was the tradition of the Road Trip born. Though the liberating aspects of cars are far less emphasized in today's culture, the Road Trip continues to be seen as a rite of passage at various stages of life - the Road Trip with the parents as a child, the Road Trip with the friends as a teenager, the Road Trip with the spouse as a young couple, and then the Road Trip with your own children to complete the cycle. Our well-deserved love for the cars of the Classic era created that tradition.
Aside from outward appearance, cars from this period increasingly converged on industry standards: Key-turn ignition, steering wheel on the left, foot pedal configuration, windshield wipers, turn signals, standard gearshift, car radio, standard engine components, and later in the era, the introduction of seatbelts. Although fuel efficiency was poor, this was not considered important at the time due to gasoline being typically cheap at the time.
While there have been a handful of individual models of car that merit Classic status since the 1970s, by and large the Classic era of American automobiles ended nearly four decades ago.
Example C7:
Aircraft entered their Classic period in the late 1950s with the advent of commercial jetliners, and we are just now exiting it. The purest incarnation of the era is also its zenith: The Boeing 747 (introduced in 1968), as seen above. Not only has it been the work-horse of commercial aviation for nearly four decades, but remains the archetypal image of what a jetliner is. Whenever a character in a movie is seen taking a flight, and the camera cuts to an aircraft taking off the runway, chances are you are seeing a 747. Not only is it high-capacity, strong, safe, and reliable, but looks simple, balanced, and impressive.
Example C8:
The Classic era of computers began with the introduction of the Apple Macintosh in 1984 and is currently ending with the transition to multicore processing, notebooks, cellphones, and other device spinoffs. If you are viewing this diary on a computer purchased more than three years ago, then your computer is Classic - regardless of how frustrating you may have found that specific machine / brand / model to be. Its stable configuration ultimately included a peripheral LCD screen, a desktop machine (virtually all upright now, like the Dell in the above image), a peripheral keyboard, and an optical mouse with a scroll wheel.
Machines of this era began as single-unit computers in beige molded plastic cases, but over time evolved into the configuration described above in various shades of white, grey, or black with smooth, sylized outer shells. As for the processor, although Moore's Law was introduced long before the PC revolution, it gave regular, tangible support to the concept, as computing power doubled on a more or less regular basis. It is true that system stability became more precarious with the explosion in software complexity, but the core hardware remained roughly at the same level of simplicity and robustness over time despite the regular decrease in transistor size. That we are now having to elaborate the hardware beyond simply scaling existing components is one reason that we can say this cycle's Classic era is over for computers.
Example C9:
With respect to the internet, we can say it entered its Classic period in the late 1990s with the explosion in America Online membership, and is drawing to its close today as it has filled out all of its natural niches and begins to be abstracted further and further beyond obvious applications. Entertainment, blogging, pornography, user-generated content, communications, gaming, social networking, and dating on the web are rapidly maturing and ceasing to be the primary engines of growth on the internet, signaling the end of Classic development.
With time the internet is turning into something other than what it appears on its face: Rather than a user tool, it is becoming a data farm for researchers in academia, government, and business. In other words, when you watch a video, an increasing degree of what happens in the process is not directly related to your doing so, but instead relates to analyzing the statistical data involved. The end of the Classic era of the internet signals the beginning of an Experimental era of some entirely new and unexplored level of computational abstraction occurring on top of typical user activities.
Example C10:
Let's imagine a future where solar power has reached a Classic stage of development. It is ubiquitous, cheap, comes in many colors, shapes, sizes, and is incorporated into windows, roof tiles, siding, paint, sidwalks, road surfaces, parking lots, everything is just covered in shimmering opalescent purple, blue, orange, yellow, red, or any other color material. Cities look nothing like what they once did, but rather look dreamlike due to the strange play of light from all the PV. Imagine it.
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III. Baroque
The third stage in a technological cycle, Baroque, is characterized by an innovation cycle that leads to increasing complexity and instability of systems, requires more delicate balances, more intricate design, and more elaborate use of subtle or obscure tactics to maintain functionality.
Aesthetically, the emphasis becomes ornateness and exquisite detail, and as a Baroque era unfolds, this focus on detail may eventually compromise the overall appeal of the design or even its functionality. Features and flourishes are increasingly crammed into each new iteration, potentially spiraling into chaos or causing a backlash leading to enforced mediocrity. This is what happens when a given technology has gone too long without disruptive change.
Example B1:
The above photograph shows the Roman lorica segmentata, a Late Imperial armor design consisting of metal plate segments with brass hinges and expertly-cast helmets. Despite military technology being the most demanding of pragmatism, we can already see signs of expensively unnecessary ornateness creeping into the design, particularly in the helmet with its intricate lines, polished curves, and brass fittings. As time wore on, the trend accelerated, and intricately-detailed figures and scenes were increasingly embossed into the armor, shields, and helmets of Roman soldiers.
As Roman society collapsed around them, these designs became fervid and medieval, and ultimately the economic infrastructure needed to make such advanced armor disappeared. They continued to make ornate designs however, on wooden shields and cloth armor, although for the better part of a thousand years the images decayed into childish cartoons. Late Imperial Rome (2nd - 4th century AD) was exemplary in general of Baroque technology and culture, and the next example is from that period as well.
Example B2:
At first glance, one is tempted to appreciate the architectural balance of the Arch of Constantine (315 AD) due to the 2:3:2 size ratio of the three arches, but on close inspection the detail work is cramped, messy, and nightmarish. The dedicating inscription was carved without proper planning, leading to letters being of inconstant width in order to fit the entire text, and the statuary is already clearly hinting at the medieval direction of Roman society at this point.
This is an important example because it illustrates what a Baroque period is: Classic design values being increasingly crowded out and perverted by elaborate grotesquerie. The 2:3:2 ratio of the arches is Classic Roman architecture - the arch being a native Roman invention - but it is overlain by what can only be called Dark Age imagery.
Example B3:
With few individual exceptions, most cars since 1970 have been either Baroque or Degenerate: As total packages, they don't look that great, and many don't function optimally, but Baroque cars are designed to have features and perks that supposedly make up for it. The above car is the 1976 Cadillac El Dorado, which had what the manufacturer referred to as a "space age" instrument panel and cross-hatch front grille.
This era marked the beginning of an automotive philosophy that would ultimately destroy American auto manufacturing: Inferior engineering and poor quality control tragically under-compensated with cheap gimmicks. Examples included plush carpeted interiors, faux-wood paneling, and various other bells and whistles that failed to in any way address the fundamental shortcomings of the product.
Outwardly, the design was a hideous mutation and unhinged expansion of forms that had made 1960s cars so appealing. Clearly manufacturers were no longer paying any attention what the car actually looked like, but were just progressively tweaking existing designs into an absurdity.
Example B4:
Aviation is headed into a Baroque period, both commercially and in the military sector. The commercial example would be the Boeing 787, but the be-all / end-all of current Baroque aircraft is the military example: The F-22 Raptor. One of the most beautiful aircraft ever designed, and the most powerful fighter aircraft ever built, and yet its design is so intricate, detailed, and subtle, that it costs almost twice as much as the F-35 - a plane with more advanced technology and only modest speed and manueverability disadvantages.
Its maintenance costs are also through the roof relative to the F-35, due to so many of its key technologies (e.g., its radar-absorbing skin) being highly sensitive and requiring frequent repair. It defeats anything anyone in the world could put in the sky, but it could very easily lose a war by draining resources that could be deployed in volume rather than being tied up in a few, highly sensitive works of art like the F-22.
Modern Baroque technologies are always developed over-budget and off-schedule, because the engineering is so complex that the most subtle of issues can cascade into systemic failures requiring major overhauls in subsystem design. The F-22 is no exception, nor is the 787 "Dreamliner" that is now years behind schedule due to repeated engineering issues. What happens from here, after the Baroque phase passes, is that either a disruptive new technology will return the industry to an Experimental phase, or its existing technology will be over-elaborated into a Degenerate state.
Example B5:
Operating system software is now gruesomely, horrifically, gut-wrenchingly Baroque - even venerable brands like Mac are finding it increasingly difficult to manage the complexity of their systems, but meanwhile the usability of Linux-based alternatives such as Ubuntu is improving much less quickly than more popular systems are destabilizing.
Windows Vista is the poster child for this phenomenon. After Microsoft achieved the zenith of its Windows operating system with XP, it then went for a bridge too far and ended up creating Vista - a product that was, in some cases, practically non-functional when originally delivered, and so bloated that it challenged even the resources of brand new computers.
Unless a massive cultural shift away from bloat and featurism takes place within the major OS suppliers, many consumers may simply abandon the convenience of having these systems and opt for more difficult Linux-based ones even if they have fewer application options. A forced collapse back to basics would put software on a Degenerate footing, and it likely wouldn't be pretty for a while as people would stumble through the idiosyncrasies and arcana of learning Linux.
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IV. Degenerate
Degenerate technology occurs when an existing product or system stagnates and over-elaborates minutiae until it becomes a parody of itself, resulting in reduced capability and hideous design at greater cost. Ultimately society may be forced to abandon it for simpler, more useful technologies, unless a disruptive external innovation occurs that adds new life to it.
This stage usually follows Baroque, but does not necessarily have to - it can sometimes be skipped. Often there are political dimensions causing the stagnation, and political solutions may change the situation.
Example D1:
In the High Middle Ages, Europe had rediscovered the art of making plate armor - lost since the fall of the Roman Empire - and this had led to a Classic era of "knights in shining armor." Unfortunately, they took it just a little too far by the end, and medieval knights ended up completely covering themselves in metal to the point they could barely move or see, and at that point it became a Degenerate technology.
It wasn't unheard-of for knights who wore such total armor to end up literally drowning in a puddle if they happened to fall face-first into one, because they couldn't get up. The weight of it was so heavy that one's movements were comically slow and rigid, and were only effective against a similarly armored knight if he became unhorsed. Primarily the advantage was in protecting a mounted rider as he charged an enemy, as well as providing power behind a lance or sword blow as he rode by. But if a knight were knocked off his horse in battle wearing full plate armor, he was essentially a dead man.
By the time of the Hundred Years War between England and France (1337-1453), even the advantages of a mounted knight disappeared, as English longbowmen massacred heavily-armored chevaliers. Bows had traditionally not been able to penetrate plate armor, but English longbows were much more powerful than earlier bow technologies, and advances in crossbows were also telling the tale in plate-armored corpses. Once firearms showed up on the battlefield, there was no longer a point in even pretending the armor was useful.
[Update: I'm told in comments that the Royal Armouries museum in London refers to some full-body plate armor configurations as having significant mobility, but that they were so expensive that they were perhaps not as commonplace as the clunky, immobilizing configurations.]
Example D2:
Junk food is a supreme example of Degenerate technology. Mankind struggled for millennia to achieve surplus foodstuffs through agricultural innovation, irrigation, and storage methods. In the modern era, these methods were extended through the use of fertilizers, pesticides, refrigeration, pasteurization, and vitamin fortification, as well as complex chemical preservatives.
But having achieved great surpluses, the energies of human innovation were then turned to faster preparation, lower cost, and better taste. At this point dyes and flavorings began to be substituted in place of nutritious food in the interest of low prices, and preservative-laden, reconstituted "foods" created from a wide variety of commodity products and chemicals were offered for convenience and speed of delivery.
As saturated, trans-fatty oils, salt, and high-fructose corn syrup are cheap commodities, fast food is full of them. What they are not full of is vitamins, minerals, and proteins, so our "food" technology has in some ways taken us backwards and left us malnourished even as we gobble down more "food-like substance" than ever before. This is clearly a Degenerate technology, in that it's become so successful that it ends up doing the opposite of what motivated it in the first place.
Example D3
The 1980s saw the onset of Degeneracy in the American automotive sector, as one craptacular, ugly, boxy, low-quality car after another entered the market and people bought them because there were as yet few alternatives. At this point car companies weren't even trying to hide their lack of effort as they had in the 1970s, because people had grown accustomed to it. People were densensitized to having cars that fall apart after a few thousand miles, the brakes fail, the wheels fall off, or the engine explodes.
In the photo above, we see the DeLorean - a car anyone under the age of 40 only knows about because it appears in Back to The Future. This particular car is a tragedy, and illustrates the difficulty of trying to pull an industry out of a Degenerate state. John DeLorean was widely recognized for his brilliance and talent as an engineer, and he wanted to rescue the industry that had given him his success by pioneering a new car company. Instead, what he ended up doing was churning out a low-quality mediocrity at luxury prices, becoming a laughingstock, a failure, and an emblem of the times.
By the 1990s, American consumers were abandoning the Big Three in favor of Japanese imports that were efficient, reliable, and increasingly had appealing styles that were being ignored by US manufacturers. The return of competition restored the industry to a Baroque state, which it has been in ever since, but the coming flood of electric vehicles presages an Experimental era on the horizon.
Example D4:
At present, the United States has a Space Shuttle that can carry 7 crew to orbit. But Space Shuttle technology is so royally Baroque and dangerous that NASA decided in 2004 to scale back its ambitions by creating the Ares I rocket and Orion space capsule, capable of carrying 4 crew to orbit on top of a "simple, cheap, and soon" solid rocket booster. The only problem is that Ares I is neither simple, cheap, nor would it be realized any time soon, even if it proved to work - something cast into serious doubt by vibrations identified in computer model runs of a launch.
Were the Ares I to be pursued, and if it succeeded at becoming functional, it would do so at billions of dollars over budget and years later than originally projected. In other words, we would be spending more money than we are now, to do less than we are, and doing it more dangerously. NASA as a rocket-design and manufacturing bureau is, quite simply, a fountain of Degenerate technology. Fortunately SpaceX will be around to pick up the slack - a company that is leading a new Experimental era in rocketry.
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In conclusion, I would summarize my basic thesis: Technology occurs in a progression of stages - Experimental, Classic, Baroque, and Degenerate. Experimental is characterized by a wide diversity of nonstandard approaches of varying quality and efficiency; Classic is mostly standardized, very beautiful, and incremental innovations increase the product or system's simplicity; Baroque is ornate, detailed, and elaborate to the point of fault, focusing or expanding on the minutiae of a Classic technology and perverting it; and Degenerate occurs when a Baroque technology becomes hopelessly complicated and descends into chaos or self-parody.