Every solution of a complex problem, every helpful advance that eases or eliminates a specific harmful or undesirable impact, every innovation promising better performance, higher profits, or improved handling, or increased comfort or safety, has its obverse. Its reach and intensity range from predictable, tolerable, manageable (or simply time-limited) side effects to unforeseen yet potentially serious consequences that are not easy to deal with.
Some of them can be eliminated only by abandoning the original solution in favor of a superior (entirely harmless) approach, or, if that is impossible, then at least replacing it with a less offensive, somewhat more acceptable choice.#5895•
The Instagram app attracted 25,000 users the day it was launched and had ten million of them within ten weeks: that is, obviously, the result of a dizzying but inevitably only temporary exponential growth: unless it begins to communicate with numerous extraterrestrial civilizations, Instagram cannot sign up more users than Earth's population.
And is the fact that Instagram was sold to Facebook for more than $1 billion when it still had just thirteen employees a swoon worthy example of exponential growth or a perfect example of the irrational priorities of modern society? Just check the valuations of companies producing milk or bread or tomatoes: while you cannot live without a ceaseless supply of food, hundreds of millions of people would not#5898•