The Principle 27 of the 40 principles is "Cheap short-living objects" eg, replace an inexpensive object with a multiple of inexpensive objects, comprising certain qualities (such as service life). This is the philosophy behind Google's building their servers from cheap components and allowing for their failure. I was wondering if with their Russian background Google founders were familiar with TRIZ.

Then I thought about another notion of TRIZ: the constants of evolution (or patterns of evolution, as TRIZ calls it). If we can recognize the constant of evolution in two systems we can use the known stages of one system to predict the future stages of the other system.

To test this view I compared the history of ships with the history of the Internet. http://science1.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/history-of-the-internet-in-ship-years/

This is topical because with Google Super Bowl ads it seems that we reached the "cruise ship" consumerism stage of the Internet.

Comments are welcome. Thank you.