Frontier
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The JC’s amateur guide to systems theory™
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The “frontier” is a unique time and place at the birth of a cultural structure where there are new tools, new vistas, there are unlimited possibilities, no rules, maximum hope, minimal exploitation little infrastructure, and the barriers to entry, and chance to forge standards and protocols on which the community can build.
Frontiers are NOT a stable state, and soon enough those with the foresight and wherewithal to exploit the new tools will effect barriers and establish economic dominance in a way that excludes new entrants, or aligns the new platform to the interests of these early adopters. They will get progressively more organised,process focussed and standardised, and hence less flexible, to the point where that cannot react to future shocks (which seemed to cannibalise their existing model).
Cf Roger Martin The Design of Business and the line cycles of a business of mystery, heuristic and algorithm.
The frontier is the point at which the risk of outright failure is highest, but conversely the opportunity should the the projects not fail, is greatest. One that can only be a Steve Jobs Bill gates koma Mark Zuckerberg Lennon and McCartney, Elvis if one is there at the frontier.
Popular recent frontiers
- Rock n roll 1950s.
- Personal liberation/sexual revolution 1960s
- The personal computer 1970s
- Digitised media 1980s
- Financial derivatives 1980s
- Internet - 1990s
- Crypto - 2010
- AI 2020s