A half millennium ago, the product of a paradigm shift such as the printing press took about a century to be widely deployed. Today, the products of major paradigm shifts, such as cell phones and the World Wide Web, are widely adopted in only a few years’ time. • A specific paradigm (a method or approach to solving a problem; for example, shrinking transistors on an integrated circuit as a way to make more powerful computers) generates exponential growth until its potential is exhausted. When this happens, a paradigm shift occurs, which enables exponential growth to continue. The Life Cycle of
...more
