PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

7. COMPETITION IS THE CREATOR AND THE REGULATOR
Clustering is observed in every growth process. If the overall time
period is short, for example the diffusion of fashion or fads, the wave is
felt strongly. If the process proceeds slowly, the clustering may pass
unnoticed. For instance, few people have become aware of the fact that
life expectancy went through cycles of growth, as we will see in next
chapter: one that peaked around the turn of the twentieth century and
another that peaked in the 1950s.
SUCCESSIVE SUBSTITUTIONS
It was demonstrated in Chapter Six that natural substitutions proceed
along the same S-shaped patterns as the populations of species. The introduction
of a gifted new competitor in an already occupied niche
results in a progressive displacement of the older tenant, and the dominant
role eventually passes from the old to the new. As the new gets
older, it cedes leadership in its turn to a more recent contender, and substitutions
thus cascade. For example, steamships replaced sailing ships,
but later they themselves were replaced by ships with internalcombustion
engines. While the total registered tonnage of the merchant
fleet in the United States increased by a factor of almost one hundred
during the last two hundred years, the percentages of the different types
of ship show two successive substitutions.
In Figure 7.5, the vertical scale is again such that S-curves become
straight lines. We can distinguish two one-to-one substitutions: steam
for sail before 1900 and motor for steam after 1950. Between these
dates all three types of boats coexist, with steam claiming the lion’s
share. It is worth noting that motor ships represented only 10 percent of
the total tonnage as late as 1970. Steamships have been decreasing in
favor of motor ships, but remained the dominant type of merchant vessel
all the way to the end of the twentieth century; although they are
often fueled by oil instead of coal, and in some cases use steam turbines
instead of coal-burning external-combustion engines.
Internal-combustion engines, when first introduced in ships, started
spreading “abnormally” rapidly, probably due to the momentum acquired
in their swift propagation through transportation overland
(replacement of horses by automobiles), which had just preceded.
153