Getting Better, Faster

Stephen Caver in his post, Getting Better, pooh-poohs the idea that things can get better in leaps and bounds, but rather postulates that progress is incremental.

With all due respect, (quite a bit of respect, actually, given Stephen is a recent employee of Airbag Industries LLC) I think that Stephen is wrong.

The airplane example is flawed. Sure, as with any product development, aircraft design is incremental.

But in the grand scheme of things, how long did it take for mankind to go from not flying to flying?
How long was it from when the airplane was invented to when it was a useful, commercially viable, everyday-life, kinda thing?

Not long.

And I believe the web is the same.
How long, in the lifetime of electronic communications, did it take for the WWW, from when it was first publicly available to become a part of life?
How long, in the life time of the web, did it take for web standards to become more-or-less ubiquitous?

Not long.

Things webby have been glacial, of late, but I think 2008/2009 will bring some radical changes on the web.

Leaps and bounds, people; leaps and bounds.