In science, excess time and resources may be wasted on theories that simply exhaust their explanatory power, or which tantalizingly promise to reveal proof of a model, but which never comes. The seminal description of this is Thomas Kuhn's
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which coined the cliche, "paradigm shift."
Philosophers of science have arm-wrestled Kuhn's paradigm theory ever since, but it's hard now to hear an argument for people to collectively head a new direction with "paradigm shift" being uttered. We tend to "keep going with what's working until it stops working," in the words of that cultural icon, football coach Bear Bryant.Â
This is what makes innovation a social process, not just a technical one. Someone has to try an idea that has not been obvious to most of us; and more than that, convince others that it fits observation better, or "works better for us."Â
One does not change economic practice just by coughing up a different economic model. And the world will not deal with Compression just by asserting that there might be something to it. Acting on the basis of a different concept of things is a huge shift in how we thing about a great many detailed things in our lives. Conceptually easy, but the actual technical work and the business model shifts are tough transitions.Â