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and they are too numerous and complicated to explain fully here (they are fully explained in the book The Dvorak Keyboard). Mainly, the QWERTY keyboard became entrenched in tradition. By the time Dr. Dvorak came up with his design, there were hundreds of thousands of typewriters, and it would have cost millions to convert them all over. The switch was just about to be made, but then World War II broke out, and the War Dept. ordered all typewriter keyboards be set to the most-common standard—QWERTY—and typewriter manufacturers retooled to produce small arms. By the end of the war, QWERTY was cast in concrete.

Figure 9.5. The Dvorak keyboard.

Regardless of the details and outcome of the QWERTY v. Dvorak debate, this does not effect the validity of the QWERTY Principle. Historical lock-in and path dependency are real phenomena. Note, for example, that we still use the “shift” key on our computer keyboards to produce a capital letter, even though there is no “carriage” inside the computer that needs shifting, and we still stroke the “return” key, even though there is no carriage to be returned to the start position. QWERTY got a historical head start over other keyboards, and it has proved good enough to maintain its market dominance. If Dvorak (or some future alternative) proves superior to QWERTY, it will have to be superior enough to overcome personal and cultural momentum. Technological systems, like biological ones, lock in their form and function according to a combination of efficacy and history. Optimal v. suboptimal is not the only deciding factor. The market triumph of VHS over superior Beta videotapes, and of cassette tapes over higher-quality eight-track tapes, for example, are additional examples of path dependency and lock-in, yet it has been argued that VHS tapes and audiocassette tapes allow for longer recording times, a value customers may weigh in market purchase decisions. When efficiency and optimality are not the deciding factors, consumer habit and market history may be.

History matters. The panda’s thumb is good enough for stripping leaves off of bamboo shoots (clumsy though it may be), and thus there was no reason for natural selection to undertake a major overhaul of the panda’s paw. Although cultural selection weakens the path dependency hardwired into biological systems driven by natural selection, historical momentum is still a demonstrably powerful force in both evolution and history.

10

What If?

Contingencies and Counterfactuals:

What Might Have Been and What Had to Be

IN RAY BRADBURY’S 1952 novelette A Sound of Thunder the story’s hero, Mr. Eckels, arranges an unlikely itinerary through a most unusual travel company, whose advertising marquee reads:

Time Safari, Inc.

Safaris to Any Year in the Past

You Name the Animal

We Take You There

You Shoot It

Time Safari, Inc., has studied the past so carefully that the company knows precisely when and where a certain animal is going to die. With the omniscience of Laplace’s demon (see chapter 9), Time Safari, Inc., takes its customers back to just moments before the animal is about to meet its natural demise, at which time the hunter can nab his game.

There is, however, one critical stipulation—you must stay on a carefully chosen path that prevents any alteration of the past, as the guide explains: “It floats six inches above the earth. Doesn’t touch so much as one grass blade, flower, or tree. It’s an anti-gravity metal. Its purpose is to keep you from touching this world of the past in any way. Stay on the path. Don’t go off it. I repeat. Don’t go off. For any reason! If you fall off, there’s a penalty. And don’t shoot any animal we don’t okay The consequences of violating this rule are clear: “We don’t want to change the future. We don’t belong here in the past. A Time Machine is finicky business. Not knowing it, we might kill an important animal, a small bird, a roach, a flower even, thus destroying an important link in a growing species.”

Every hunter’s favorite target, of course, are the dinosaurs, and Eckels heads