Combining tools helps technology evolve (Image: David Hecker/AFP/Getty)
BARELY four years after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the Victorian novelist Samuel Butler was calling for a theory of evolution for machines. Since then, a few hardy souls have attempted to oblige him, but none has quite hit the mark. Their reasoning, very much à la Darwin, is that any given technology has many designers with different ideas – which produces many variations. Of these variations, some are selected for their superior performance and pass on their small differences to future designs. The steady accumulation of…
