I was explaining SaaS and cloud computing to someone who's been out of touch with tech for the past couple years. The best analogy I ended with were:

It's like webmail, remember when you dumped outlook express? Like that. Cloud computing? Remember all the buzz about thin clients? It's the same thing, now your browser is like a thin client.

Another implication of the "vector of innovation is steep" is that co-innovation, or independent invention occurs frequently.

We should challenge the notion that the 1st innovator can claim infringement on the 2nd innovator, when the 2nd can prove that the invention occurred independently (e.g., occurred before the 1st patent application was published).

Funny that you found books too long on several occasions. I'm a ruthless in abridging my own blog posts, and I find traditional books to be sheer culture clash with online writing.

I see the essential problem in physical books having to look "big enough" on the shelf to prove that you're getting your bang for the buck. Such is the opposite case for free online content--where writers optimizing for reach and fear that long content would be ignored.