A historical lens

An interpretive note, not part of the testable framework. Historical analogies are easy to fit after the fact, so claims are marked as sourced or as interpretation.

The pattern

In earlier technology waves the capability arrived first and the organization changed later. Early adopters swapped the old part for the new one and kept the old design around it, and the gains were small. The gains came when work was redesigned around the new capability.

That is ABSORB's claim: faster development is not faster delivery until the surrounding system changes.

Electricity

Sourced. Factories first replaced the steam engine with one large electric motor and kept the central shafts and belts, and gains were small. Putting a motor on each machine removed the shafting and allowed lighter, more flexible factories. Learning to design them took decades: only about half of US factory mechanical drive was electrified by the early 1920s, roughly four decades after the first central power station (Paul David, 1990).

Interpretation. Code gets faster inside a delivery process designed for slow code, just as motors ran inside factories designed for steam (D1). Fire risk produced codes and testing laboratories, pushed by insurers, after the incidents (D3).

The dotcom era

Sourced. Webvan built its own warehouses and fulfillment at scale before proving its first market and shut down in 2001; Peapod, using existing supermarkets, survived. PayPal nearly failed on fraud before building detection that brought it down.

Interpretation. Online ordering was fast only if the physical stage could absorb it (D1), and trust and verification, not features, decided who survived (D2).

Where the analogies break

• Reorganizing software delivery is faster than rebuilding factories, so the lag may be shorter.
• Electricity behaved the same each time. AI output varies, so verification matters more.
• No bust is implied.

The full note, with sources and what was not verified, is HISTORICAL_LENS.md.