One of the critical challenges that all new technologies, including Information Technologies (IT), must inevitably face is that the millions of users in the world, the “adopters”, almost never choose the best technology. Or, as it would be expressed from a Darwinian perspective, it is not the case that, for living beings, the strongest one is the one that survives.
This has been an ancestral misinterpretation of Darwin’s observations. The one that survives is the most adapted, not “the best one”. The one that survives, in each living species, is not the most robust or the strongest. During human history, people have shown evidence of miss-understanding this fact. Adaptation is the rule, not power of perfection.
As Leon Megginson, Professor of Management and Marketing at Louisiana State University, is his ‘Lessons from Europe for American Business’ published in 1963, —in a famous quote usually associated to Charles Darwin— “According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” Even today one can see this quote in the stone floor of the Headquarters of the California Academy of Sciences.
One might wonder why Albert Einstein or Max Plank did not become powerful politicians or billionaires. One could also ask why, since ancient times, the “better men” -like those “better men” that Plato wanted to be the leaders of the State and the Army- have never been the ones dictating laws or guiding society. For Plato the “better men” were the most serious scientists and philosophers who are blessed by nature with the gift of wisdom in order to become rulers. Why, then, does it never happen that Nobel Peace Prize Laureates or Nobel Prize winners in Economics take control of world’s politics and finances?
It seems to be true that there is quite a bit of social Darwinian determinism. This would imply that the strongest and wisest fail to win the biological competence. They fail to win that game that the Nobel Prize in Economics, John Nash, would call the game of domination based on dynamics of domination. The market is the clearest and most obvious example of how the dynamics of domination occur. Any new product or service is only known by about 10 or 20 people at the beginning. Depending on the strategies of “domination” -or we could also call them “social propagation algorithms”-, the new product or service may be transmitted from the original 20 people on and on resulting, in the end, in a reach of thousands or millions of people.
What a mathematical or computational perspective understands as “propagation algorithms”, can be described more easily from another epistemological framework as ‘the scientific art of Marketing’. Birds are dinosaurs that invested hundreds of millions of years in losing most of their body mass, in reducing brain size and body size ir order to develop the most beautiful feathers. This has resulted in explosive propagation algorithms that have made birds one of the true owners of the planet, while their strong ancestors extinguished.
There are crypto projects that can be analyzed as potential great examples of “adaptation” in a Darwinian sense. One of these examples is Tron, TRX. It’s worth spending time in Tron and studying its history and evolution. Tron has been criticized in the past harshly. Many critics have assured thousands of times that Tron does not have a concrete vision, that it is always improvising along the way, that it has plagiarized parts of its WhitePaper, that it has copied the Ethereum’s native language (Solidity) and that it does not represent a high level of technological innovation. Thousands of articles saturate the Internet with this type of reasoning.
Of course, all reasoning that is sincere and respectful, is valid reasoning that one must study and take into account. However, we must be careful not to fall into evolutionary-Darwinian traps. Does Tron want to be the smartest and the strongest, or will Tron be trying to find the best evolutionary propagation algorithms? This is still in the process of verification. We do not know the definitive answer. However, the few evidences that we have at this moment seem to indicate that Tron is investing its energy in developing feathers and not necessarily muscles, as purist scientists and idealists would want.
Apparently, numbers suggest that feathers have their secret power. With feathers, you can get your currency up 140% in less than a month during the worst bear market imaginable. As others descend and descend, Tron climbs and climbs. Logically, in a highly volatile market, 140% does not imply a future of market domination. The future will only be known in the future. However, the current evidence is worthy of much attention and reflection. Perhaps all the projects that dream of becoming Crypto-Dinosaurs in the future, should study and reflect on the potential of investing in feather-development.
Those who remember the 80s and 90s of the development of IT, probably still keep in mind that, in those times of last century, there were many engineers and geniuses who thought that Windows would have no future. About 30 years ago, one listened to some specialists saying that Windows did not have a clear original vision, that Windows was improvising during along the way, that Windows was plagiarizing technology from all over the world, and that Windows re-used everything that had already been done for Linux and for Mac.
Even today, in 2019, one will never listen, is a course of Operating Systems, a Professor saying that Windows is the best or the strongest. Professors sometimes even insult Windows. In most Universities, IT students usually hear terrible comments about Windows from their instructors. Purists tend to hate Windows. Nonetheless, what is the most widely used Operating System in the world? O course, the most used is Windows. Windows is not the most efficient. It is not the most powerful. It is not the most robust. But until 2019 it has been the best “adapted”. Will Tron go the same way?
What is Tron doing to obtain these growth results during hellish conditions? What is the secret formula, if there is any? If one pays attention only to the visible dimension with the purpose of not speculating, one thing can be said with certainty: Tron’s Psychological Strategy is absolutely amazing. Tron is everywhere. You cannot be a Crypto-fan and not spend some seconds or minutes of your time thinking about Tron. You can ignore EOS. You can ignore Cardano. You could even ignore Litecoin. But you simple will not ignore Tron. You can love or hate Tron. But you cannot ignore Tron. Psychology and Neuroscience point out that this is all you need to stay being adaptive: others’ attention. If you occupy some space in the memory disk of many human minds, you will most likely have a place in the future.
Crypto enthusiasts have to think a lot about this. We have to study and operationalize this formula and its component factors. Tron is a ‘Maestro’, a true Master. Tron is giving an example of the scientific art of Marketing. One has to study the Tron campaign during the year 2017. One has to study the promises. One has to study how these promises have changed drastically and how users have accepted these changes. One has to study the whole personality of Justin Sun and the connection he has with coin holders. One has to study the hopes and expectations that the new Tron Blockchain represents for investors. One has to study the whole vision of Marketing behind the acquisition of BitTorrent and the new Aidrops. We must study all this if we want to learn to think in evolutionary terms and not only in terms of the strongest. Tron demonstrates that it has a lot of potential, that it has a lot to teach to the crypto-world and that its determination to grow and multiply is absolute.
