Apple and Samsung are embroiled in bitter patent wars in US
in what has been described in some media channels as the patent war of the
century. Much of this has been centred about the design aspects of the smart
phones introduced by both the companies during last couple of months. A major
aspect of this lawsuit is the rectangular design with circular edges which
Apple claims that Samsung has copied for its own smart phones. But what can the
principal of Evolutionary Convergence tell us about design aspects, which are
of such importance to this lawsuit. I would say much! What this principal from
biology tells us is that two or more totally unrelated species could develop
same evolutionary features if they occupy the same ecological niche in nature. One
of the most widespread examples of evolutionary convergence is the development
of wings, species across such wide range such as insects, birds, dinosaurs and mammals
have developed the feature of wings, when they have to adapt for flight for
survival. (Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution
for more details)
With respect to humans
this convergence appears in intellectual aspects or aspects in which humans
shape their external environment. Take the example of Pyramids, why is that the
pyramids found in Egypt, Peru, Mexico, China and several other parts of the
world have almost similar shape ?? Was there any connection between the
different civilizations that built these pyramids? Or was there some alien race
guiding these diverse groups. The different civilizations that built these
pyramids where such large distances apart and were separated by an even greater
period of time, they could not have possibly influenced each other. Then what
was the reason that all these pyramids have similar shape? The answer is
simple, with the technology available at the hands of these civilizations and
the height of structures which they wanted to build; only one shape could be
used – shape which had a large base and which tapered as the height increased –
in effect the shape of a pyramid. Thus people in different cultures and in
different areas and epochs had come up with similar solutions to the problems
that were posed to them.
Now coming back to the present could it be possible that two
different groups of smart people (one Apple and other Samsung) would have come
up with same design aspects of the Smartphone that they were trying to built.
Yes, it could be very probable, at least in the physical design aspects of
phone. To think of it, is it so impossible to come up with rectangular design
with curved edges?? There are only few shapes available for suitable design –
circle, rectangle and square. Even though circle gives the best optimized area,
its symmetry makes it difficult to hold in hands as our hands are more capable
of gripping fence and handle like shapes. Similar is the case with square whose
symmetry makes it difficult to hold. This leaves us with the poor old rectangle
as the available choice, but hey!! What about its sharp edges? Let’s file them
off to give a really smooth feel, and Voila!! The design of the new smart phone
emerges!! So I believe that given the same constraints it is quite possible for
two different groups to come up with the same solution for a problem (even
though the actual details of execution might be different). Whatever be the
outcome of the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit one thing is clear that the
technological constraints, physical constraints and minimum expenditure of
energy constraints will keep driving technological innovations around the world
towards convergence.
No comments:
Post a Comment