Sequencing Apple's DNA

1Sequencing the First Segments of Apple’s DNA

1.1. The gene, domain and cultural bias

Every once in a while, a unique individual appears capable of accomplishing changes and, by the same token, showing the rest of us the way to create new paradigms. This seems to happen at the precise moment when mankind needs it. Nikola Tesla was the luminary inventor who harnessed electricity in the first part of the 20th Century. In the arts, John Lennon was an inspiring soul in the time of the Beatles. They acted as accelerators of certain energies. And Apple, fueled by a unique individual, was the company that helped carry technology to new computing and entertainment paradigms.

All these exceptional individuals share a singular way of thinking about things. Nikola Tesla tested his amazingly complicated apparatus mentally until he found functional proof, whereas John Lennon coined sentences that still propagate around the world, each with an enhanced thinking signature, free of linear structure. Where does such an ability come from? What is the DNA sequence of that nonlinear thinking? Where are the genes which account for a sustained capacity in a given domain? Do we all share them within ourselves? How do we locate and possibly activate them?

Can science fiction come to the rescue? If we imagine these genes as time capsules that are already available – but which we normally find ourselves unable to open – it would perhaps seem appropriate to iconize them with a pictured cryptic diagram. ...