Fashionable Problems
I think pg understates the problem. It isn't just fashionable. Think about how the solutions we use today evolved.Someone had an idea originally and certain decisions were made about that approach.. those that best adapted to the conditions of the time were successful... rinse and repeat over several decades.Those ideas that preserved the past were more likely to succeed because they preserved the ecosystem that already existed. Ideas that diverged too much from the existing successful tech had a huge obstacle in their way: they had to recreate all of the existing solutions in their new model. So even if they would lead to a better solution over time, they may never get past that initial roadblock. And the longer we stay on the path, the bigger that roadblock becomes.If we are all thinking of ideas around the existing model and assuming all of the existing assumptions, then we end up with similar solutions (fashionable solutions). We've reduced the solution space, leading to a limited number of solutions.Perhaps groundbreaking/valuable tech can be found by questioning those existing assumptions; identifying where tech is still built on assumptions that are no longer true; or reexamining past solutions to see if they can be solved in better ways today with what we've learned since then...