In a factory, a worker takes a piece of steel off a production line and puts it in an oven, where it is heated to above 1500 degrees Fahrenheit before being allowed to cool slowly. When it enters the oven, it is hard and unmalleable, but on exit, it is altogether more flexible and open to be worked. Annealing is the process of heating metals to a certain temperature and then cooling slowly, to allow the internal bonds to align. While metals cooled by plunging into water tend to be hard and stiff, annealed metals such as mild steel are more flexible. Annealed glass is also more resistant to shock, and is less likely to shatter.
The principle can also be applied to areas that straight logic doesn’t apply, using the mathematical concept of simulated annealing in which a problem space is ‘heated up’, that is made more dynamic and unconstrained, before slowly being brought under control again. The information revolution has seen unprecedented change and has been massively dynamic, with a result that in many cases it is out of control. Cyber-bullying and trolling suggest people do not yet know how to be civil within the new tools now available. New business models undermine the old without being able to turn a profit.
It will, inevitably, find a level as new norms and principles as established, for how people with technology and behave to each other. No doubt we shall look back on this period as a time of great change, which slowly became standardised and controlled as attempts to do so faster met with failure.