Technological Phylogenetics: Modeling Tech Evolution Like Git (Paper)
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3 hours ago
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xsytrance
3 hours ago
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I’m the author—happy to answer questions or expand on any part of the framework.

One way I’ve been thinking about the framework is with a thought experiment:

If you brought Einstein forward in time, he wouldn’t automatically understand modern technologies (like smartphones or large-scale software systems), even though he had the intellectual capacity.

He’d need context—lineage, intermediate steps, and the pressures that shaped those developments.

The idea behind the framework is to make that “context layer” explicit for technological artifacts—so you can reconstruct not just what exists, but how and why it evolved the way it did.

Not a perfect analogy, but it helped me think about the role of lineage and context in understanding complex systems.

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