Paradigm Shift I

I have just ordered a book from my local independent book shop (Harlech Post Office), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (University of Chicago Press) in it as the Observer put it:-

"Kuhn's central claim is that a careful study of the history of science reveals that development in any scientific field happens via a series of phases. The first he christened "normal science" – business as usual, if you like. In this phase, a community of researchers who share a common intellectual framework – called a paradigm or a "disciplinary matrix" – engage in solving puzzles thrown up by discrepancies (anomalies) between what the paradigm predicts and what is revealed by observation or experiment. Most of the time, the anomalies are resolved either by incremental changes to the paradigm or by uncovering observational or experimental error. As philosopher Ian Hacking puts it in his terrific preface to the new edition of Structure: "Normal science does not aim at novelty but at clearing up the status quo. It tends to discover what it expects to discover."

The trouble is that over longer periods unresolved anomalies accumulate and eventually get to the point where some scientists begin to question the paradigm itself. At this point, the discipline enters a period of crisis characterised by, in Kuhn's words, "a proliferation of compelling articulations, the willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit discontent, the recourse to philosophy and to debate over fundamentals". In the end, the crisis is resolved by a revolutionary change in world-view in which the now-deficient paradigm is replaced by a newer one. This is the paradigm shift of modern parlance and after it has happened the scientific field returns to normal science, based on the new framework. And so it goes on."

As I understand it Kuhn used his area of expertise, physics, as the stating point. Hopefully examples in biology and chemistry in the book will elaborate on this.

Electronics is a subset of physics and having worked at the end of the war (WWII) in RADAR development he would have been up to speed in valve electronics and 1954 saw the commercialization of silicon transistor technology. How he saw the development of computer science I have yet to discover. The LEO 1 is considered to be the first commercial computer and first operated a business application in 1951. The importance of the new technology. However there has been considerable debate about this:-

"Computer science also differs from physics in that it is not actually a science. It does not study natural objects. Neither is it, as you might think, mathematics; although it does use mathematical reasoning pretty extensively. Rather, computer science is like engineering; it is all about getting something to do something, rather than just dealing with abstractions, as in the pre-Smith geology." Feynman, Feynman Lectures on Computation, 1970.

The phase 'Paradigm Shift' has been miss-used in the fifty years since the book was originally published especially in corporate gobbledygook. I started wondering how the term could be applied to tech/human interaction 

The  way computers have affected our lives is massive, undeniable and progressing at incredible rate (Moore's Law etc) However you can live relatively comfortably with out even ever touching one. The transition to what is referred to as Web V2.0 may appear to be a 'Paradigm Shift' but the technology behind it and the equipment that it used on has had a reasonably linear progression right back to LEO 1 and before. You put something in, you get something out that you perhaps wanted or as Richard Dawkins more elegantly put it in the Blind Watchmaker "If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result."

Artificial Intelegance (AI) has frequently been cited as the big next step, perhaps where a real 'Pardigm Shift' may happen. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success. Often the mushroom effect of machines becoming sentient, involving rapid self-awareness coupled with duplication and evolution, has been explored in theory and fiction (Terminator et al) but the Turin Test has constantly defeated the best minds in the field and is optimistically estimated to be at least 20 years away.

To be honest I don't think there will be a 'Paradigm Shift'. I think the technology will continue to develop in it's linear fashion.Virtual augmentation combining GPS, social media, advertising and search will merge into a seamless system.What I find interesting is not the nuts and bolts, it's all possible, it comes down to the user interface and other data i/o pathways.