james burke

• let me give you one grossly oversimple, as is everything i do, example of the ripple effects of one very minor by-product of the printing press.
  
  in the early 17th century, right at the beginning new printed maps happened because now you can update them every time the sailors were back: "did you find anything new" and he says "yep. the island everybody says is north of the headland, is south" thanks you say "like that?" "yes". print.
  
  this makes it safer and safer to go out to the east looking for cargos in places like china and japan profits from tea and porcelain coming back from those places are so high like i think like creamed off 600% profit. so everybody wants in on the game. the problem is, cash.
  
  so a new thing is invented called a land register so you can formalize title against your land and then borrow money against it. so another new thing is invented called a mortgage company. most of the borrowing goes into another new thing set up to take the risk out of shipwreck called insurance, so now it's a little safer and lots of money is coming in thanks to another new thing called a limited joint stock company, so there's a stock market running with the help of another new thing, called a national bank. providing money through another new thing called a credit agency and the whole shabang running through another new thing called a business contract which finds its way into political arrangements in the contract between citizen and state embodied in another new thing called the constitution of the united states. the ultimate ripple effect, one might argue, of printed maps. or not.
  
  the reason ripple effects surprise people i think is because, if some institution or company procedure works very well, pretty soon you want to set it in concrete. so that nothing can prevent it from going on doing valuable work. which soon becomes, blocking any further change, because change will bring destabilization. which is why every people in any institution all the way from ancient egypt to the latest internet startup can very soon find themselves with one aim above all: perpetuating themselves and their institution or procedure.
  
  whether or not that institution or procedure has been outdated by events outside the institution. and institutional thinking can be a very powerful tool for ignoring the obvious.