Out with the old?

A rather good read is The Nature of Technology by W. Brian Arthur and this particular passage where he quotes an observation by sociologist Diane Vaughan helps paint a good picture of the attachments the old and the new and the difficulties of balance between (and given to) them have over us...

It [the new] threatens to make the old expertise obsolete. Often in fact, some version of the new principle has been already touted or already exists and has been dismissed by standard practitioners, not necessarily because of lack of imagination but because it creates a cognitive dissonance, an emotional mismatch, between the potential of the new and the security of the old. The sociologist Diane Vaughan talks of this psychological dissonance:

[In the situations we deal with as humans, we use] a frame of reference constructed from integrated sets of assumptions, expectations, and experiences. Everything is perceived on the basis of this framework. The framework becomes self-confirming because, whenever we can, we tend to impose it on experiences and events, creating incidents and relationships that conform to it. And we tend to ignore, misperceive, or deny events that do not fit it. As a consequence, it generally leads us to what we are looking for. This frame of reference is not easily altered or dismantled, because the way we tend to see the world is intimately linked to how we see and define ourselves in relation to the world. Thus, we have a vested interest in maintaining consistency because our own identity is at risk.

So it is with a novel principle. The greater the distance between a novel solution and the accepted one, the larger is this lock-in to previous tradition. And so a hysteresis – a delayed response to change – exists. The new is delayed by the very success of the old, making changeover in technologies neither easy nor smooth.

This lock-in of an older successful principle causes a phenomenon I will call adaptive stretch. When a new circumstance comes along or a demand for a different sphere of application arrives, it is easier to reach for the old technology – the old base principle – and adapt it by ‘stretching’ it to cover the new circumstances.

W. Brian Arthur The Nature of Technology

Preserve

Aren’t these attitudes like what the older members (and staff?) of heritage organisations have, or lean toward? Even those of any age that want to hang on to a visible but bygone age, like felled trees that then seem to require some kind of monument?

Isn't heritage and preservation overrated if Mr. and Mrs. Crabapple’s old, but sturdy sort of multi-purpose garage-cum-shed-cum-greenhouse they made from mostly reclaimed materials, tup Northallerton way, isnt preserved?

Why’s it not got listed status nor a blue plaque? It’s been around for some time, served them well, tells some sort of story and still has a few useful, but slightly shabby 1970s net-curtains to keep peering eyes out and help a bit of the greenhouse part when needed. It’s worth conserving, isn’t it? It even has a bit of space for a kind of mini café that could serve cream teas, sometimes, to give some extra justification for maintaining it and the effort required in visiting it!

A good preserve can be fruit-based or a good preservation technique can involve formaldehyde and incur long titles like, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.