The Red Queen Effect: Running as Fast as You Can Just to Stay in Place
“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” This quote, spoken by the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1871), became one of the most influential metaphors in evolutionary biology—and increasingly, in technology. Origins: From Victorian Nonsense to Scientific Theory Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) was a mathematics lecturer at Oxford when he wrote Through the Looking-Glass....