While each parabolic curve is bound for selfdestruction, all live in
larger systems. If you see any particular domain as a series of such
curves, then you can at least know (roughly) where you are in a
larger scheme of things.
Michael Rothschild's "Bionomics" has some very interesting
presentation of this phenomenon. You can get charts of how various
technologies or "generations" as we used to call them in earlier
computer days have developed. There is also a logic to this that
Brian Arthur at the Santa Fe Institute has developed quite nicely.
-- Michael McMaster Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk