It did not take long after the rise of the commercial printing press before someone figured out that erotic novels were a good idea. ... It took people another 150 years to even think of the scientific journal.

It did not take long after the rise of the commercial printing press before someone figured out that erotic novels were a good idea. ... It took people another 150 years to even think of the scientific journal.

The transfer of [...] capabilities from various professional classes to the general public is epochal.

Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.

Bureaucracies temporarily suspend the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a bureaucracy, it's easier to make a process more complex than to make it simpler, and easier to create a new burden than kill an old one.

Curiously, once technology gets boring, the social effects get interesting.

A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.