The evolution of data and disparate systems

The weird thing about evolution is that it affects us even though we are deeply aware of its mechanisms and processes. There's something unavoidable and inexorable about it. While that's true of physical processes governed by natural selection, perhaps it's less true of human culture and technology. Or is it? Over the long history of IT and its use in and by big business, we've seen constant innovation, sometimes incremental in progress but sometimes radically discontinuous. Consider the steady march of microprocessor performance in the former case and the sudden AI deep learning revolution for the latter. But in both… [Continue Reading]