“Gradually, then suddenly.”

– Tim O’Reilly, quoting from Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises:

“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

Tim writes: “I love lines from literature that crystallize a notion, and then become tools in your mental toolbox. This is one of those. Keep it handy, because you’re going to see ‘gradually, then suddenly’ processes happen increasingly in the next few decades, not just in technology and in industries transformed by technology, but in global issues like climate change, and in politics.”

I couldn’t agree more. “Gradually, then suddenly” is also echoed in Kevin Kelly’s natural history of a new idea: “Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Obvious,” which I wrote about here.