No to the first, and only a partial read of the second, until just now. I did email the c|net piece to a couple of networker folk when I first came across it, who, as it turns out, had already read the article, earlier.
I've now read both articles in full, thank you very much, and the second one is uncannily close to my own post upstream, I must say. Way too close, in fact ;-)
IMO these things do follow a natural cradle-to-grave-like path, and tend to repeat themselves time and time again in most if not all disciplines. Dr. John McQuillan of Next Generation Networking fame once wrote an article in Business Communications Review about eight years ago (I think, in any event it was pre-web-based) that captured many of the the evolutionary dynamics that underlie these phenomena in a generic, yet cogent, way. I'll attempt to locate it in my library and post it if I'm successful in finding it.
Some of his views, along with those of David Pasmore's, can be seen in this Next Gen Conference promo page in the section on "Punctuated Equilibrium":
bcr.com
"Many other thoughtful authors have attempted to understand the processes of evolution, selection and succession. Charles Darwin, of course, established the intellectual framework for analyzing these processes in the natural world. In 1972, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould revived one of Darwin's observations, introducing the term "punctuated equilibrium." Species appear to go unchanged for a long time in the fossil record. Then the species is replaced, without any transition, by a new species that looks like a variation of the old one. Their explanation is that a group of creatures was cut off from the rest of their species, was under selection pressure and was able to evolve quickly. Later, they spread and replaced their parent species."
I suppose one might also want to go directly to the source and visit the work of Niles Eldredge and Jay Gould, Punctuated Equilibria, or read the following analysis and critique of same:
talkorigins.org
Thanks for the links.
FAC |
