Harris Tweed, the miracle fabric

To understand the development of technology, you may be better off studying evolutionary biology rather than, say, computer science. A grasp of evolutionary theory, with the facility for reasoning backwards which it brings, is a better model for understanding the haphazard nature of progress than any attempt to explain the world by assuming conscious and deliberate intent.

One useful concept from evolutionary thinking is the idea of the ‘adjacent possible’. As the science writer Olivia Judson explains: ‘Evolution by natural selection only works if each mutational step itself is advantageous. There’s no such thing as advantageous in a general sense. It’s advantageous in the circumstances you’re living in.’ In the field of product design, there is an analogous idea known as ‘Maya’, a phrase coined by Raymond Loewy, which stands for ‘Most advanced yet acceptable’. Any successful product should be notice-ably better than those which precede it, but not so different as to be alarming, incomprehensible or unbelievable.