Category: Entrepreneurship

Technology Was Democratized When Standardization of Parts Enabled Simplification of Manufacture and Maintenance

There’s a lot to like about Steward Brand. His Whole Earth Catalog was quirky unpretentious fun. His How Buildings Learn, has a wonderful chapter on the ramshackle, unnamed, disrespected building on the MIT campus where quirky innovators were given space to create. His essay on Xerox Parc explained how the technology being developed there could liberate individual creativity. When Steve Jobs at Stanford delivered what is widely believed to be the best commencement address in history, he ended by quoting Stewart Brand’s final message in the 1974 Whole Earth Catalog: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”

In the review quoted below, highlights that the simplification of production enabled by standardization of parts promoted the democratization of technology maintenance (and we might add, helped to democratize innovation too). Major simplification goes against the Theory of the Adjacent Possible which claims that technology develops toward greater and greater complexity.

(p. C7) Read front to back, “Maintenance” tells a coherent story of civilizational progress. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most machines were one-off creations, built by artisans to their own quirky specifications. But the technological age increasingly demanded standardization. Weapons led the way. If a cannonball jammed in an imprecisely bored barrel, the cannon might explode, killing its crew. On the other hand, if the parts of a flintlock rifle were interchangeable, a soldier could repair his weapon without the need for a gunsmith.

The manufacturing techniques that enabled this kind of precision gradually spread to other technologies. The same tools developed to bore cannon barrels were then used to improve steam engines. But standardization had its enemies, Mr. Brand notes, especially among gunsmiths and other artisans. During the French Revolution, the sansculottes rebelled against the new industrial techniques. “Craft was extolled; uniformity was deplored,” Mr. Brand writes. France’s technical progress was set back 50 years.

A century later, the early automobile industry faced a similar split. The original Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, Mr. Brand writes, “was manufactured as a bespoke, unique vehicle, meticulously crafted by a dedicated team.” Henry Ford’s Model T, by contrast, was a crude but ingeniously simple machine. Ford made sure each part was manufactured to unvarying specifications, “perfect enough” that it could be installed by a moderately skilled worker on a moving assembly line. No fine-tuning needed.

Ford’s embrace of standardization allowed his Model T to be built quickly and inexpensively. But standardization had another, paradoxical effect: It allowed nonexperts to repair their own vehicles and other equipment. A farmer who owned a Model T didn’t need a forge or metal lathe to fix his engine; he could simply order a replacement part—or cannibalize one from a wrecked car in a junkyard.

The French revolutionaries feared industrialization would depersonalize society by marginalizing skilled artisans. Mr. Brand shows that, instead, standardization democratized access to technology. With a few tools and a little gumption, anyone could learn to maintain and repair the machinery of daily life.

For the full review see:

James B. Meigs. “Fixing the Future.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Dec. 6, 2025): C7.

(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 5, 2025, and has the title “‘Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One’: Making the Future.”)

The book under review is:

Brand, Stewart. Maintenance of Everything: Part One. South San Francisco, CA: Stripe Press, 2026.

An earlier Brand book that I praised in my opening comments is:

Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. New York: Viking Adult, 1994.

Thomas Jefferson Thanked Edward Jenner for Advocating Vaccine

As a classical liberal, and an advocate for faster innovation, I am sympathetic to much in the health freedom movement. But I think some in the movement are making a mistake in being opposed to all vaccines. Some vaccines have done some harm, but overall the best vaccines are some of the greatest advances in medicine. I like Thomas Jefferson’s statement in the passage from the review quoted below.

(p. C8) In the 1780s Thomas Jefferson was serving as a diplomat in France when the Marquis de Lafayette brought him a message of unwelcome news from Virginia: His young daughter Lucy had died of whooping cough. The letter did not spare the absent father the grim truth: “Her sufferings were great.” Jefferson ultimately buried four of his children (including two girls named Lucy). He knew what he was saying when he wrote appreciatively to Edward Jenner, the English physician who discovered vaccination, that “medicine has never before produced any single improvement of such utility.”

For the full review see:

Kyle Harper. “Sickness And Civilization.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Jan. 24, 2026): C7-C8.

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 23, 2026, and has the title “‘The Great Shadow’: Sickness and Civilization.”)

The book under review is:

Bauer, Susan Wise. The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2026.

Entrepreneurs Make Leaps: A Critique of the Theory of the Adjacent Possible (TAP)

In my Openness book, I argue that the innovative entrepreneur is a key agent of the innovative dynamism that brings us the new goods and the process innovations through which we flourish. The Theory of the Adjacent Possible, devised by Stuart Kauffman, Roger Koppl, and collaborators, and popularized by Steven Johnson, aims to “deflate” the innovative entrepreneur, and argues that technological progress is an inevitable result of a stochastic process. I have written an extended critique of the TAP, and have posted the latest version to the SSRN working paper archive. In some ways the working paper, especially the last half, can be viewed as further elaboration and illustration of some of the points made in Openness.

The citation for, and link to, my working paper is:

Diamond, Arthur M. “Entrepreneurs Make Leaps: A Critique of the Theory of the Adjacent Possible.” (Written Jan. 26, 2026; Posted Feb. 18, 2026). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6166326

My book mentioned in my initial comments is:

Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.


“The Future Doesn’t Belong to the Fainthearted; It Belongs to the Brave”

(p. C5) Thirty-five years ago . . ., on the morning of Jan. 28, the U.S. space shuttle Challenger exploded just over a minute after its launch from Cape Canaveral.

. . .

Reagan postponed his State of the Union address, which had been scheduled to take place that evening, and set out to craft a speech to the nation that would especially reach the hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren who had watched the disaster on live TV in their classrooms.

. . .

. . . the middle of the speech, where Reagan addressed himself to the schoolchildren of America about the harsh lesson of human tragedy, is where the important message is conveyed: Risk is a part of the human story. “The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.” Reagan spoke to the families of all the lost astronauts over the following days; they all told him our space program must continue.

. . .

The aftermath of Challenger, which saw a special commission set up to investigate the causes of the disaster through public hearings, points to one of the continuing challenges posed by modern complexity. The Rogers Commission, which issued its report that June, was harsh in its assessment of NASA’s negligence in risk assessment and launch decision-making.

. . .

The usual response to such lapses is to add more layers of bureaucratic review and decision-making. But that is a two-edged sword. While reducing risk, it can also lead to soaring budgets, rigidity, groupthink, and less creativity and innovation. Just compare the cost and progress of NASA’s current rocket and spacecraft designs to recent private sector space efforts.

For the full commentary, see:

Steven F. Hayward. “The Enduring Lessons Of the Challenger Disaster.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Jan. 30, 2021 [sic]): C5.

(Note: ellipses and bracketed year added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated January 28, 2021 [sic], and has the title “The Challenger Disaster and Its Lessons for Today.”)

Hayward is also the author of:

Hayward, Steven F. The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989. New York: Crown Forum, 2009.

New Hampshire Unbinds Electric Entrepreneurs

The energy sector of the economy is both heavily regulated and much in need of innovation and expansion. Unfortunately the heavy regulation often blocks the innovation and expansion. Travis Fisher and Glen Lyons describe New Hampshire’s solution–a new law that greatly reduces regulations for electricity suppliers who do not connect to the broad “public” grid. Unbinding energy entrepreneurs should bring more innovation and greater competition–more electricity at lower prices.

Fisher and Lyons’s commentary is:

Travis Fisher and Glen Lyons. “New Hampshire Sparks a Revolution in Electricity Supply.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 27, 2025): A11.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date September 26, 2025, and has the same title as the print version.)

AI Cannot Know What People Think “At the Very Edge of Their Experience”

The passages quoted below mention “the advent of generative A.I.” From previous reading, I had the impression that “generative A.I” meant A.I. that had reached human level cognition. But when I looked up the meaning of the phrase, I found that it means A.I. that can generate new content. Then I smiled. I was at Wabash College as an undergraduate from 1971-1974 (I graduated in three years). Sometime during those years, Wabash acquired its first minicomputer, and I took a course in BASIC computer programming. I distinctly remember programming a template for a brief poem where at key locations I inserted a random word variable. Where the random word variable occurred, the program randomly selected from one of a number of rhyming words. So each time the program was run, a new rhyming poem would be “generated.” That was new content, and sometimes it was even amusing. But it wasn’t any good, and it did not have deep meaning, and if what it generated was true, it was only by accident. So I guess “the advent of generative A.I.” goes back at least to the early 1970s when Art Diamond messed around with a DEC.

This is not the main point of the passages quoted below. The main point is that the frontiers of human thought are not on the internet, and so cannot be part of the training of A.I. So whatever A.I. can do, it can’t think at the human “edge.”

(p. B3) Dan Shipper, the founder of the media start-up Every, says he gets asked a lot whether he thinks robots will replace writers. He swears they won’t, at least not at his company.

. . .

Mr. Shipper argues that the advent of generative A.I. is merely the latest step in a centuries-long technological march that has brought writers closer to their own ideas. Along the way, most typesetters and scriveners have been erased. But the part of writing that most requires humans remains intact: a perspective and taste, and A.I. can help form both even though it doesn’t have either on its own, he said.

“One example of a thing that journalists do that language models cannot is come and have this conversation with me,” Mr. Shipper said. “You’re going out and talking to people every day at the very edge of their experience. That’s always changing. And language models just don’t have access to that, because it’s not on the internet.”

For the full story see:

Benjamin Mullin. “Will Writing Survive A.I.? A Start-Up Is Betting on It.” The New York Times (Mon., May 26, 2025): B3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 21, 2025, and has the title “Will Writing Survive A.I.? This Media Company Is Betting on It.”)

If AI Takes Some Jobs, New Human Jobs Will Be Created

In the passage quoted below, Atkinson makes a sound general case for optimism on the effects of AI on the labor market. I would add to that case that many are currently overestimating the potential cognitive effectiveness of AI. Humans have a vast reservoir of unarticulated common sense knowledge that is not accessible to AI training. In addition AI cannot innovate at the frontiers of knowledge, not yet posted to the internet.

(p. A15) AI doomsayers frequently succumb to what economists call the “lump of labor” fallacy: the idea that there is a limited amount of work to be done, and if a job is eliminated, it’s gone for good. This fails to account for second-order effects, whereby the saving from increased productivity is recycled back into the economy in the form of higher wages, higher profits and reduced prices. This creates new demand that in turn creates new jobs. Some of these are entirely new occupations, such as “content creator assistant,” but others are existing jobs that are in higher demand now that people have more money to spend—for example, personal trainers.

Suppose an insurance firm uses AI to handle many of the customer-service functions that humans used to perform. Assume the technology allows the firm to do the same amount of work with 50% less labor. Some workers would lose their jobs, but lower labor costs would decrease insurance premiums. Customers would then be able to spend less money on insurance and more on other things, such as vacations, restaurants or gym memberships.

In other words, the savings don’t get stuffed under a mattress; they get spent, thereby creating more jobs.

For the full commentary, see:

Robert D. Atkinson. “No, AI Robots Won’t Take All Our Jobs.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., June 6, 2025): A15.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 5, 2025, and has the same title as the print version.)

When Portugal Is Too Hot, Move to England

When their current waters warm sea creatures often migrate to cooler waters. So just noticing the fewer creatures in the warmer waters will overestimate the harm done by the warming. In the article quoted below, when Mediterranean waters warm, Octopuses migrate to English waters. Mediterranean fishermen lose, English fishermen gain, but there is no clear net loss or gain to the Octopuses or to humanity in general.

This example supports my claim that we too often ignore the benefits of global warming.

(p. A4) Expecting his normal catch of plaice, turbot and Dover sole, Arthur Dewhirst was surprised when his nets spilled their contents onto his ship’s deck earlier this year. Instead of shiny, flapping fish, hundreds of octopuses wriggled and writhed.

His first thought? “Dollar signs! Dollar signs! Dollar signs!” he recalled with a laugh, sitting in his trawler last month in the harbor at Brixham in Devon, England.

Across England’s southern coast, fishing crews reported an extraordinary boom in octopus catches this summer. Sold for around 7 pounds a kilo, it was sometimes worth an extra £10,000 ($13,475) a week to Mr. Dewhirst, he said.

. . .

There are several theories about the causes of this puzzling phenomenon, but scientists say that warming water temperatures make the region more hospitable to this species of octopus, which is normally found off the Mediterranean coast.

According to Steve Simpson, a professor of marine biology at the University of Bristol, “climate change is a likely driver” of the population boom. “We are right on the northern limit of the octopus species range, but our waters are getting warmer, so our little island of Great Britain is becoming increasingly favorable for octopus populations,” he said.

For the full story see:

Stephen Castle. “Octopuses Bring Windfalls and Anxieties to England’s Southern Coast.” The New York Times (Tues., September 30, 2025): A4.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 29, 2025, and has the title “Octopuses Invade the English Coast, ‘Eating Anything in Their Path’.”)

Innovative Entrepreneur Alfred Beach Privately Built and Operated America’s First Subway

Even classical liberals, strong supporters of free markets, often believe that utilities and mass transit need to be built and operated by governments. So I was delighted to learn from the book review quoted below that the first subway in the United States was privately built by a spirited innovative entrepreneur. That spirit still lives today, if we let it. (Ponder Travis Kalanick.)

(p. C9) In November 1869, the New York inventor Alfred Beach pushed the “move fast and break laws” principle to the limit in developing America’s first underground passenger railway. Without city approval—officials thought he was building a small system to improve mail delivery—he carved out a tunnel 8 feet wide, 300 feet long and right under Broadway.

. . .

Beach (1826-96) . . . was a remarkable character, a precocious innovator who channeled the forces—mass media and technological change—that were making the world modern. His father owned the New York Sun, the country’s most popular paper, and co-founded the Associated Press. Beach went to work for the Sun as a teenager; by 22 he was running it with his brother, and by 25 he sold his share to concentrate on his real passion: Scientific American, which he had bought a few years earlier. He and his partner made the publication a success and built a complementary business filing patents for the inventors who read it. When his client Thomas Edison “perfected the phonograph in 1877,” Mr. Algeo notes, he gave Beach the first demonstration, recording himself singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

In 1849, when he was 23, Beach outlined in the magazine’s pages his vision of a railroad beneath Broadway, with two tracks, gas lights and stops on every corner. “The proposal was radical—the world’s first subway wouldn’t open in London for another fourteen years—and the technological hurdles were immense,” Mr. Algeo writes. The projected route involved a tunnel 20 times as long as the longest extant.

. . .

Beach . . . struggled to get approval for his plan, stymied by the interlocking corruption of Tammany bosses and real-estate interests. Elevated railways and other mass-transit rivals threatened in the meantime to crowd him out. When his railway finally did open, it lasted a mere three years, doomed by the financial crisis of 1873.

For the full review see:

Timothy Farrington. “Bookshelf; One Man’s Tunnel Vision.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 27, 2025): C9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date September 25, 2025, and has the title “Bookshelf; ‘New York’s Secret Subway’: Tunnel Visions.”)

The book under review is:

Algeo, Matthew. New York’s Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2025.

Substrate Startup Develops Less Complex and Cheaper Way to Etch Computer Chips

To prepare for a workshop next week I have been reading a lot about Stuart Kauffman and Roger Koppl’s theory of the adjacent possible (TAP), as it is applied to the growth of technology. One of the implications of TAP is the that new technology gets progressively more complex, in the sense of using an ever larger number of components. I think that is often true but I can think of a couple of counter-examples. So I was interested to read yesterday that the production of computer chips may provide another counter-example.

(p. B1) In March [2025], James Proud, an unassuming British-born American without a college degree, sat in Vice President JD Vance’s office and explained how his Silicon Valley start-up, Substrate, had developed an alternative manufacturing process for semiconductors, one of the most fundamental and difficult challenges in tech.

For the past decade, semiconductors have been manufactured by a school-bus-size machine that uses light to etch patterns onto silicon wafers inside sterile, $25 billion factories. The machine, from the Dutch company ASML, is so critical to the chips in smartphones, A.I. systems and weaponry that Washington has effectively blocked sales of it to China.

But Mr. Proud said his company, which has received more than $100 million from investors, had developed a solution that would cut the manufacturing cost in half by channeling light from a giant instrument known as a particle accelerator through a tool the size of a car. The technique had allowed Substrate to print a high-resolution microchip layer comparable to images produced by the world’s leading semiconductor plants.

. . .

(p. B4) Mr. Proud moved to San Francisco from London in 2011 as a member of the first Thiel Fellowship class, a college alternative for aspiring founders created by Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist.

. . .

After the Trump administration persuaded TSMC to build a plant in Arizona, Mr. Proud decided to build his own company. He and his brother Oliver, 25, started reading books and academic papers on semiconductor lithography. They questioned why the process had become so complex and expensive.

One of the major costs in modern lithography machines, which have more than 100,000 parts, is how they use high-powered lasers to turn droplets of molten tin into a burst of extreme ultraviolet light. The machines use the light to etch a wafer of silicon in a process known as EUV lithography.

. . .

The team spent much of 2023 building a custom lithography tool. It featured thousands of parts and was small enough to fit in the back of a U-Haul. They tested it in computer simulations.

In early 2024, Substrate reserved a Bay Area particle accelerator for a make-or-break test. The company ran into problems when vibrations near the particle accelerator caused the tool to gyrate and blur the image, Mr. Proud said.

A frantic, daylong search found that the air-conditioning system was causing the vibration. Substrate adjusted the fan speed until the process printed “very beautiful and tiny things repeatedly” on a silicon wafer, Mr. Proud said.

For the full story see:

Tripp Mickle and Mike Kai Chen. “A Less Costly Route To Computer Chips?” The New York Times (Weds., Oct. 29, 2025): B1 & B4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 28, 2025, and has the title “Can a Start-Up Make Computer Chips Cheaper Than the Industry’s Giants?”)