8/27/2023 0 Comments A nuclear paradigm shift![]() Why wouldn’t these companies want to let the world know that soon you’ll be able to charge your Lyric at the same place you filled up your old Caddy?Īnybody who tells you with confidence that they know what the next paradigm will be is wrong at best and deceptive at worst. They already have the real estate and consumer awareness. That’s where we are with EVs: the beginning.īut what will the spandrels be? What unexpected changes might happen?įor example, I was surprised that the big oil companies (Shell, Chevron, BP) were not exhibiting at CES given their recent massive investments in EV charging. ![]() It can take decades for a new paradigm to cement a new world order. Once a paradigm shift happens, it’s not like somebody has thrown a light switch and everything instantly changes. Instead, new EV brands like VinFast, EVs from established companies like the Ram 1500 pickup truck, EV software stack companies like Apex.ai, and myriad charging technologies abounded. No exciting Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cars were on display. The auto hall at this year’s CES showed conclusively that the EV paradigm shift has already taken place. The collateral damage to these spandrels, the losers, were the disrupted older taxi companies that refused to change. ![]() Uber and Lyft, for example, are spandrels, these ride-hailing companies co-opted the technological affordances of smart phones (maps, GPS, and credit cards) to create a new kind of taxi company. Gould adapted it to discussions of evolution, and we can adapt it one step further to technology.* (Hang on: this will get clear momentarily.) The notion of spandrels comes from architecture. A spandrel is a non-adaptive by-product of a big evolutionary change that can be co-opted for a secondary use later. Sometimes, as with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and the scary gender politics of the last few years, those fictions can seem uncannily predictive.Ī useful second idea, spandrels, comes from the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. Science fiction writers ( like me) can spend time building fictional worlds where we explore what living with those impacts will feel like. Trend watchers and futurists (like me) can point to the things they expect to have massive impact (artificial intelligence and smart glasses are my two biggies right now). (For my fellow recovering English majors, this was also like Wordsworth not realizing that he had already crossed the Alps in The Prelude-the greatest “whoops” in Victorian poetry.)Īnybody who tells you with confidence that they know what the next paradigm will be is wrong at best and deceptive at worst. Then, somewhere around 2012 we all realized that we’d missed it: the year of mobile had been 2007 when the iPhone exploded onto the scene. One important and misunderstood thing about paradigm shifts is that you can only see them in the rear-view mirror once your thinking has already changed.įor example, in the first decade of this millennium pundits predicted that each successive year would be “the year of mobile,” but it never seemed to arrive. Einstein realized that Newtonian physics didn’t fully account for energy, which led to nuclear power. In the 1400s, Copernicus realized that the Earth-centered model of astronomy he was taught didn’t make sense given the sun-centered data he uncovered, which led to better understanding of the world. (My favorite exhibit was the quietly transformative What3Words.)Īs we explored new Electric Vehicles (EVs), charging technologies, autonomous vehicles, and more, I found myself thinking again and again about Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigm shifts in his classic book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Ī paradigm shift occurs when there’s enough disconfirming data to make you discard the mental model you’ve been using. I spent the week leading tours of the automotive hall at CES with my friends at StoryTech. What this week’s Consumer Electronics Show has to do with the death of cursive writing in American schools, how to break down the elements of disruption, and more. ![]()
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