Society and Reality

An article in Design News suggested that a fancy programable calculator can’t replace a pencil’s simplicity. What makes a simple tool so effective?

Simple tools are flexible.
People are complex.

It is the combination of flexibility and complexity that are well matched.

New Scientist July 2006 contains an interview with Joan Roughgarden, professor of biological sciences and geophysics at Stanford University. Joan disagrees with theories of sexual selection proposed by most contemporary biologists. I have no desire to enter the fray on this topic, but there was an interesting insight in one of her answers:
The narrative carries […]

The main point of the article is to look at a common understanding of self-interest and a negative reaction to it by social scientists, and then demonstrate that in an earlier understanding of the term, it functioned as an improvement to existing social circumstances.

I suspect that the problems run deep and this surface behavior we are experiencing has been in the making for a very long time.