I am Kevin Kelly, radical techno-optimist, digital pioneer, and co-founder of Wired magazine. AMA! : r/Futurology
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Diminishing returns - Wikipedia
A common example of diminishing returns is choosing to hire more people on a factory floor to alter current manufacturing and production capabilities. Given that the capital on the floor (e.g. manufacturing machines, pre-existing technology, warehouses) is held constant, increasing from one employee to two employees is, theoretically, going to more than double production possibilities and this is called increasing returns.
If we now employ 50 people, at some point, increasing the number of employees by two percent (from 50 to 51 employees) would increase output by two percent and this is called constant returns.
However, if we look further along the production curve to, for example 100 employees, floor space is likely getting crowded, there are too many people operating the machines and in the building, and workers are getting in each other's way. Increasing the number of employees by two percent (from 100 to 102 employees) would increase output by less than two percent and this is called "diminishing returns."
Technical debt - Wikipedia
In software development, technical debt (also known as design debt[1] or code debt) is the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (limited) solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.[2]
Analogous with monetary debt,[3] if technical debt is not repaid, it can accumulate "interest", making it harder to implement changes. Unaddressed technical debt increases software entropy and cost of further rework.
Common causes of technical debt include:
Ongoing development, long series of project enhancements over time renders old solutions sub-optimal.
When I think about Adobe's reliance on entrenched menu panels and new menus with new/inconsistent interfaces I think of this. They've lasted so long that new features are all stapled on as menus instead of integrated throughout the whole system. Some ideas require a rethink of the whole interface, something Adobe can't afford because they're moving too much and don't have the resources to dedicate to soemthing of that scale?
Parallel development on multiple branches accrues technical debt because of the work required to merge the changes into a single source base. The more changes done in isolation, the more debt.
Similarly, this reminds me of the Gmail redesign's "blue-gate" where designers on Twitter pointed out how many different tones of Blue were in different aspects of the redesign. It seemed apparent that each component of the interface had it's own dedicated team, and the inconsistencies in appearance/interface design came from non-thorough communication between the teams.
Kevin Kelly on Why Technology Has a Will
The game is that every time we create a new technology, we’re creating new possibilities, new choices that didn’t exist before. Those choices themselves—even the choice to do harm—are a good, they’re a plus.
We want an economy that’s growing in the second sense: unlimited betterment, unlimited increase in wisdom, and complexity, and choices. I don’t see any limit there. We don’t want an economy that’s just getting fatter and fatter, and bigger and bigger, in terms of its size. Can we imagine such a system? That’s hard, but I don’t think it’s impossible.