PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

7. COMPETITION IS THE CREATOR AND THE REGULATOR
appear in well-defined clusters followed by periods of time when they
do not appear at all. The superstitious will tell you that bad things always
occur in threes, or “It never rains but it pours.” For some, good (or
bad) luck seems to come in waves when they are either “on a roll” or
“under a black cloud.”
Peaks of luck at casino roulette wheels can easily be demystified by
mathematicians invoking the laws of statistics and the possibility of
rigged roulette wheels. Peaks of success with the opposite sex are explained
by psychologists as a high in a person’s general well-being that
results in increased sex appeal, which attracts many among the opposite
sex in a short time. What is perhaps less easily explained is the clustering
that has been observed in the history of discoveries, in innovation, in
riots and political unrest, and in violence and warfare.
The first time I was impressed by such clustering of otherwise random
events was when I read a book titled Stalemate in Technology by
Gerhard Mensch in which there was a graph showing the time and number
of the appearances of all basic innovations in Western society.
Mensch classified what he regarded as basic innovations over the last
two hundred years and found that they did not come into existence at a
steady rate but at a rate that went through well-distinguished periods of
peaks and valleys.
Mensch defines as a basic innovation something that starts a new
industry or results in a new kind of product—the phonograph, for example.
Each innovation is based on an invention or discovery that has
been in existence for a while and that makes it all possible. Later improvements
in the manufacturing or in the quality of these products are
not counted as innovations. A clustering pattern emerges from Mensch’s
classification of basic innovations. Figure 7.2 is adapted from his book
and shows the number of basic innovations per decade. Four clear peaks
can be distinguished, spaced rather regularly fifty to sixty years
apart.
There is a certain amount of arbitrariness in Mensch’s definition of
basic innovations. The emerging clustering pattern, however, persists
among several other attempts at such classification. 4 It has also been
noted that innovations appear to be seasonal, like agricultural crops.
Throughout the winter after harvest a fruit tree undergoes a slow
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