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Ask News.YC: How difficult is it to break out of prevailing paradigms of the present?

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Ask News.YC: How difficult is it to break out of prevailing paradigms of the present?

#1
I'm hoping that some sort of interesting discussion will come of this. I came across this picture in a recent issue of Motor Trend. This was Detroit's vision of the future car way back in the 1950s.

http://www.motortrend.com/features/archive/112_0803_mercury_xm_turnpike_cruiser/photo_01.html

What was so striking about what I see here is that the car design is more or less the same as what you'd find in the 1950s on a typical automobile except that it simply has more of what we don't need.

I wanted to know what people's thoughts were about being trapped in the paradigm of our times in the sense that the engineers of this car were trapped in the paradigm of their times.

How different, in retrospect, are the designs/plans/ideas that fuel some of the startups that are popping up today any more groundbreaking or "futuristic" than the "XM Turnpike" of the past??

Re: Ask News.YC: How difficult is it to break out of prevailing paradigms of the present?

#2
People want familiarity. Therefore, a drop-in replacement has more chance of succeeding, even if it has ornate details which are completely irrelevent. As an example, some early cars had a horse reins type mechanism. This allowed a horse owner to accelerate, brake and steer a car with no training. Unfortunately, it is a fiddly mechanism which requires the use of both hands at all times. It is obvious to us nowadays that peddles and a ship style wheel is more appropriate. However, even the peddles have a varied history because double clutching was quite common on early cars and remains in use in some large vehicles.

Re: Ask News.YC: How difficult is it to break out of prevailing paradigms of the present?

#3
This is one of my favorite topics. I like the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas" because it's all about being trapped in a paradigm.

I think photo sharing is trapped in the paradigm of the early adopters (photography enthusiasts), and I write about that here:

http://ourdoings.com/2007-12-19

In general, the only way to break a paradigm is to throw it very hard against the wall of reality.

For product design that means immersing yourself in what people want. Evolve as you come into contact with different needs, wants and behaviors.

Re: Ask News.YC: How difficult is it to break out of prevailing paradigms of the present?

#4
post #2

People want familiarity. Therefore, a drop-in replacement has more chance of succeeding, even if it has ornate details which are completely irrelevent. As an example, some early cars had a horse reins type mechanism. This allowed a horse owner to accelerate, brake and steer a car with no training. Unfortunately, it is a fiddly mechanism which requires the use of both hands at all times. It is obvious to us nowadays t…

You raise an interesting point. When I saw this in Motor Trend, I was bothered with how far off the designers of the car were...Of course, nobody can predict the future accurately and it's best to be "safe" in order avoid the criticism of others. What bothered me was the thought of myself being trapped in such thinking.

Sure, it's easy to laugh at how many superfluous ornaments that are visible. I get the impression that the futurism that is present in this car is representative of the auto manufacturer's perspective of producing cars in that the manufacturing process of the future will afford automakers to pack more "features" than is necessary for the customer to take practical advantage of - that is the message I see being communicated (I can hear the manufacturing engineers patting themselves on the back saying, "gee whiz! look at what we'll be able to make in the future; no matter that anybody needs a needlessly complicated door, by golly we'll have the process streamlined so that we can increase the complexity of what we put together!!"). By this I mean that the car reflects the car maker's vision and not the customer's vision.

Let's take a wildly different example of breaking the mold: The Matrix. I would argue that what made that movie (aside from the loyal geek following of Neo wannabes, myself near the top of the list) was the unusually original photography method of "bullet time". It was something so wildly different and brought a new experience onto the silver screen unlike anything else, and to experience that on such a large scale (the movie theater) was the big selling point.

I am very guilty of the type of mindset of the automakers in the 1950s and at the moment cannot claim to be as ground breaking as John Gaeta (the visual effects genius behind The Matrix). I just feel somewhat relieved that I'm aware of it!!

Re: Ask News.YC: How difficult is it to break out of prevailing paradigms of the present?

#5
post #3

This is one of my favorite topics. I like the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas" because it's all about being trapped in a paradigm. I think photo sharing is trapped in the paradigm of the early adopters (photography enthusiasts), and I write about that here: http://ourdoings.com/2007-12-19 In general, the only way to break a paradigm is to throw it very hard against the wall of reality. For product design that m…

"In general, the only way to break a paradigm is to throw it very hard against the wall of reality."

That's a great quote! I'm curious to know how your photo-sharing site is exemplary of this statement. I'm not trying to be a jerk here (I think I do a great job of that with little effort!), instead I'm just trying to understand from the perspective of a potential user (or for that matter an investor) of your site who is interested in innovative thinking that is distinctly different from the superfluous ornamentation that you see in the "car of the future" picture given.

[just to be clear: I'm just asking for the sake of knowledge exchange, I am not at all a picture taker and I am not in the business of funding startups!]

Re: Ask News.YC: How difficult is it to break out of prevailing paradigms of the present?

#6
post #5
post #3

This is one of my favorite topics. I like the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas" because it's all about being trapped in a paradigm. I think photo sharing is trapped in the paradigm of the early adopters (photography enthusiasts), and I write about that here: http://ourdoings.com/2007-12-19 In general, the only way to break a paradigm is to throw it very hard against the wall of reality. For product design that m…

"In general, the only way to break a paradigm is to throw it very hard against the wall of reality." That's a great quote! I'm curious to know how your photo-sharing site is exemplary of this statement. I'm not trying to be a jerk here (I think I do a great job of that with little effort!), instead I'm just trying to understand from the perspective of a potential user (or for that matter an investor) of your site who…

I was talking about finding the cracks in a paradigm that needs to break, so I hope ourdoings.com is not exemplary of it. Traditional photo sharing breaks when it hits someone who has amassed a pile of digital photos but has no time to organize them into albums. It also breaks when your peers have litle time and you email them a link to your new photos instead of having thumbnails and explanatory text right in the message.

Up until late last year the ourdoings.com paradigm broke if people had a lot of photos but no time to choose the good ones. Finding what else is broken is tough, in that people may go months without using the site (putting up more photos) without that being a problem. They know they can come back and catch up easily when they have a little time.

Re: Ask News.YC: How difficult is it to break out of prevailing paradigms of the present?

#8
post #6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In general, the only way to break a paradigm is to throw it very hard against the wall of reality." That's a great quote! I'm curious to know how your photo-sharing site is exemplary of this statement. I'm not trying to be a jerk here (I think I do a great job of that with little effort!), instead I'm just trying to understand from the perspective of a potential user (or for that matter an investor) of your site who…

I was talking about finding the cracks in a paradigm that needs to break, so I hope ourdoings.com is not exemplary of it. Traditional photo sharing breaks when it hits someone who has amassed a pile of digital photos but has no time to organize them into albums. It also breaks when your peers have litle time and you email them a link to your new photos instead of having thumbnails and explanatory text right in the me…

If only "futurists" had this type of honesty about their own visions of the future then perhaps we wouldn't have so many "visions" that are obscured by more of the same.

Re: Ask News.YC: How difficult is it to break out of prevailing paradigms of the present?

#9
Here's the problem, I think: There's no escaping what you know (or what you think you know). So adding more is much simpler than changing how or why. To do so you must fundamentally break from your most basic assumptions.

My suggestion is read more broadly on a daily basis and let the ideas percolate into consciousness rather than as an strained product of it. Once there gradually shape them on their own path. I also find that talking to a broader sample of friends and family and even strangers on the bus forces you to re-evaluate those basic assumptions. Groupthink affects us all but it's really a symptom of who we associate with (and why) than it is of how we think.

Re: Ask News.YC: How difficult is it to break out of prevailing paradigms of the present?

#10

Regarding this, there is an excellent book: "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn

I also like the book, but more as a diagnosis of the disease than as a path to curing it. Still, seeing why dinosaurs develop (and hew to their turf) is a fundamental exercise in creative thinking.
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