Revolution by Jerks
By Michael Swaine
Sometimes you get the joke but wish you hadn't. Like when paleontologist Niles Eldredge heard Geneticist Brian Taylor characterize Eldredge's and Steven Jay Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium as "evolution by jerks." Perhaps the baby bird also appreciates the humor of the situation when its formerly doting parents shove it summarily out of the nest. Good one, Mom and Dad.
"Revolution by jerks," on the other hand, is no joke, because all revolutions are brought about by jerks.
Of course, there are revolutions and there are revolutions.... The revolution that resulted in the personal computer, for example, was a rebellion of the colonists against the oppressive control of the Old World masters, who sent their troops into the field in full dress uniform to march in a straight line while the colonists picked them off easily from behind the trees.
The revolution that put one of those personal computers on every desktop was a palace coup, with the small arms slipped in the back door under the exchecquer's nose. The revolution that made every obnoxious twelve-year-old a William Randolph Electronic Hearst was the discovery of the New World by a lucky navigator and its subsequent invasion by hordes of bad-mannered tourists, greed-driven merchants, and stiff-necked civil servants, to the enduring dismay of the noble savages formerly inhabiting the happy land in peace and harmony. And then there's the Java revolution.
Blend Ambition
Clearly the Java phenomenon is a revolution.
