The Worst Enemy of Progress: Standards? (3/5)

Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash

In the previous two articles on progress I might have made the impression that counter-intuitively, to achieve actual progress, older might be better. Is that so? Let’s look at an extreme example of this — a fairly well-known and often re-circulated story that “space shuttle booster’s width is two horse asses plus X”. (Or, here is a short version with pictures, in Tweet form, if you prefer Twitter.) Which, by…