Written by Himangshu Saikia on 21 February 2021
War of Currents
During the advent of electricity in the 1880s the famous “War of Currents” was being fought between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. While Edison’s company was marketing for the already existing DC (direct current) technology, Tesla was advocating for his new high voltage AC (alternating current). Edison went so far as to electrocute live-animals on stage, trying to prove how dangerous AC could be. However, with its farther transmission capabilities, and more efficient central generating stations, AC soon began to be widely accepted and is the primary means of high voltage power transmission today.
Cassettes vs CDs
When music CDs first came into the fray, cassette players were ubiquitous. However, CD manufacturers did not have to put cassettes down to prove that CDs were better. With time, CDs did become better than cassettes in all aspects — their slim size, the quantity of songs that could be crammed into them, their durability owing to lesser number of mechanical components and later their cost. Natural vs forced replacement / obsolescence AC proved better in certain aspects — like long distance transmission — than DC, and hence won the war of currents, without having to put down DC by means of any negative PR campaign. Today we have both AC and DC operating at the same time, because both are better in certain cases than the other. Similarly, the ways in which a CD became better than a cassette, was enough to make cassettes obsolete, there was no need for any negative publicity, just technological advancement was enough. The same could be said for innumerable tech gadgets like the floppy disks, pagers etc. The takeaway here is that, old obsolete ideas can only be replaced by something new —given that the new is better in most if not all aspects than the old, and in some cases, definitely much better. If a new idea is truly better, no amount of negative publicity can stand in the face of its widespread adoption. Its like the famous Buddhist saying : “These three things cannot be hidden for long — the sun, the moon and the truth”. The truth here referring to the innovative genius of an idea.
Backlashes at transition points are always imminent
Humans are emotional beings, that are governed a lot by inertia (unwillingness to change) with varying degrees to which they can perceive the future. The first automobiles were also looked upon with scrutiny when horse carriages were working so well! It is in fact seen throughout history that visionary ideas — like the heliocentric model — were always abhorred, nipped in the bud and even severely punished for. However, change is the only constant. And without the willingness to change, life would’ve never evolved in the first place.
How replacement is akin to addition and subtraction
We can formulate the acceptance of a new idea as an addition, when the idea is being actively worked on, and given prominence and attention. At the same time, we can formulate the need to forcefully make the older idea obsolete as subtraction. As may be obvious by the allegories presented by now, addition is the more natural process towards progress, and subtraction is a needless one. But more often than not, we still see a lot of effort being put on subtractive efforts, which unnatural and unnecessary. Even in romantic relationships, it is seen that nothing cures the pain and frustration of a failed relationship than another really meaningful relationship. When one really gets rid of the negativity from a past relationship, only then they are well equipped to take on another one. As we saw before, the transition meets a lot of resistance, and negativity doesn’t help.
Human Memories and Optimization on Graphs
Recent studies in Neuroscience claim that any of our memories is just a recollection of the last time we had that memory. Hence, new experiences and new memories take the space of old ones, and during sleep, our brain perhaps recycles our neural structures to fit newer memories into older patterns. Since our brain is always changing, we are always in a constant state of flux — old is slowly getting phased out, and the new is adapted in. In a graph optimization technique called Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), artificial ants are simulated to walk the edges of a graph, and weighing them similar to how real ants lay out a chemical substance known as pheromones. The pheromones evaporate over time, and hence the best path happens to be the one which has the highest pheromone concentration over time. Here I like to visualize the consequence of the constant evaporation as the ‘subtractive’ and the subsequent guided laying out of pheromones as the ‘additive’. Thus, this similar concept of ‘attention to new positives’ and ‘constant unbiased negatives’ in nature can be even adapted to computational problems.
The way ahead
How do we consciously apply these principles to real life? For one, we should stop focusing on excessive criticism, negativity and judgement. As the world becomes more technological advanced, it gets even more difficult to judge the good from the bad, the true from the false. Fake narratives have clouded our judgements so much that its impossible to guess what goes on beyond what our limited perception allows us. Thus it becomes very important to focus on positivity, always be accepting of new ideas, avoid rigidity and always believe that everything is possible. Technological advances should not be seen emotionally as taking away what we already have and love. They should be seen as windows of opportunity, which will enable us to look into the future and fix all the evils that exist in the world today. What we need, is to see technological accentuated problems with human nature, as social or moral problems, and not as problems with technology itself. In politics, we need to stop labelling people — left, right, centrist etc. — and then dump all our generalizations into them, but rather see ideas as ideas, and people as people. People are way higher dimensional than left or right, liberal or conservative (which are captured by just 2 dimensions!), we should focus on positively influencing parts of a new bill or amendment rather than be innately furious on the supposedly negative aspects blinding ourselves in the process. This way we can stop hating each other by associating with meaningless political ‘sects’ and start to actually move forward as citizens, nations and a collective human species. For life in general, these principles always hold. Cribbing and complaining serves no purpose but only as a waste of time. Hurtful feelings or emotions cannot be tossed away from our memories — any attempt at doing so actually results in more pain than relief. The way ahead is always with exploring new ideas, focusing on the positives and remaining open to change.