Rockstars and Technology Revolutions

The Surprising Way Jethro Tull Changed Broadcast with Heavy Metal

“In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
- Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

"Winning the Grammy for best hard rock/metal performance was unexpected. We were as surprised as anyone…I guess Grammy voters were thinking of the flute as a heavy metal instrument?"
– Ian Anderson, lead singer of Jethro Tull

METALLICA WAS ROBBED

In 1989, the US Recording Academy shocked the music world by awarding the Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance to the band Jethro Tull for their album "Crest of a Knave."

It was, to say the least, a highly controversial decision. In fact, Jethro Tull did not even bother to attend the awards ceremony. They didn’t think of themselves as a Heavy Metal band, and like everyone else, had assumed that Metallica would win.

As a rock band, Jethro Tull’s primary innovation (if that’s the right word?) was their use of the electric flute in hard rock (definitely not the right category). But revolutions, musical or otherwise, often start in the most unexpected ways. And by a weird coincidence, this was doubly true for Jethro Tull. Once for the band, mind you, but also for the man three hundred year before.

When the group was formed in Blackpool England in 1967, their manager came up with a unique promotional strategy.  If attendance at one of their shows was bad, he would simply rename the band and promote them somewhere else as if they were a new act.

Eventually this strategy paid off, and the group got a permanent residency performing weekly at the Marquee Club in London. Their manager, a history buff, had named the band “Jethro Tull” that week. The name stuck and Jethro Tull was off to global success. For a second time…

Fifty miles west of London and almost 300 years earlier, the original Jethro Tull had launched an even more significant revolution involving an entirely different type of heavy metal and broadcasting.

THE MAN BEHIND THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

In 1701 Jethro Tull, an agricultural innovator from Berkshire, England, introduced the world’s first seed drill - a tool that would revolutionize planting methods in England and ultimately the world. His invention would drive unprecedented food production, free up labor, and ultimately make the industrial revolution possible.

Jethro Tull’s invention, the seed drill, was made of a metal wheel around which short metal tubes had been evenly placed. When pulled behind a plow, each tube would scoop an individual seed as the wheel rolled, and then punch it into the ground.

The method of randomly casting seeds in all directions was known as “broadcasting” from which we get the modern usage for analog radio and TV broadcasting.

For centuries, farmers had carried seeds in shoulder bags and tossed them out by hand.  This method of randomly casting seeds in all directions was known as “broadcasting,” from which we also get the modern usage for analog radio and television broadcasting. Then, as now, broadcasting was analog, inefficient, unpredictable, and led to uneven and unmeasurable results.

But Jethro Tull’s seed drill did more than simply mechanize the process: it standardized planting. The drill ensured that seeds were always sown at a precise and correct depth and spacing, which dramatically improved crop yields.

More importantly, this standardization allowed for rigorous testing of the many variables associated with agriculture. Once seeds were planted on a standard basis, farmers could test levels of light, water, fertilizer, and more. And it was standardization, more than mechanization, that kicked off the agricultural revolution.

THE POWER OF STANDARDIZATION IN TECH REVOLUTIONS

Most people see a specific innovation, whether the seed drill, steam engine, personal computer, mobile phone, or, more recently, artificial intelligence as drivers of technological revolutions. Each provides immediate and obvious gains in capabilities, performance, and efficiency.

Improvements in automation deliver linear gains. It is standardization that drives exponential transformation.

However, looking across technology revolutions it becomes clear that while automation offers immediate increases in efficiency, these gains are linear. But looking across technology revolutions, it is actually the effects of widespread standardization that unlock exponential gains. Standardization delivers multiple reinforcing and compounding benefits:

• Predictability, Efficiency, and Economics: As more farmers adopted the seed drill, they could better manage their fields, reducing waste and optimizing the use of land, labor, water, fertilizer, and seeds. This efficiency drove higher yields with fewer resources, and the cost of production plummeted.
  
  While the PC automated tasks, it was the widespread adoption and consolidation on a few operating systems that provided a common standard for developing and marketing applications at scale to a global audience.  Likewise, while the iPhone was a radical innovation that took computing mobile, it was the standardization of platforms like the App Store that really caused innovation to explode exponentially.  

  
  More recently, the development of standardized algorithms and frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch) has accelerated the adoption of AI across industries. These standards enable developers to build and deploy AI models more efficiently.
  
  

• Data and Experimentation: A key aspect of standards is the ability to measure, capture, compare, analyze, and apply improvements that unlock incredible value creation. Standardized planting techniques allowed farmers, for the first time, to accurately experiment with different crop varieties and cultivation methods. This in effect made every field into a different agricultural “lab” in which tests could be run, results accurately measured, and improvements widely and rapidly applied.

  
  Recent examples of this effect include the ability to run A/B testing on large data sets. In genomics, we are seeing incredible achievements in drug discovery and personalized medicine for a similar reason. In robotics, the integration of sensors and IoT devices generates vast amounts of data, which can be analyzed to improve robotic performance and efficiency.
  
  This data-driven approach mirrors the agricultural experimentation enabled by Tull’s seed drill. Across the communication space, the deployment of 5G networks provides unprecedented data speeds and capacity, enabling new applications and services that were previously unimaginable.
  
  

• Lower Production Costs Democratize Experimentation: Standardized planting across the entire industry led to higher yields and these surplus gains allowed for increased risk taking and experimentation, further accelerating and democratizing the innovation discovery process in unexpected ways.
  

  This is similar to the way in which standardized PC chipsets, manufactured cheaply at scale fueled early PC hobbyists and HomeBrew clubs building on the Altair and led to the formation of Apple computer.  More recently, we see a similar dynamic with the Raspberry Pi single board computers.

PARRALLELS WITH CURRENT TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTIONS

Standardization in agriculture paved the way for the Agricultural Revolution in Britain, which ramped up food production, boosted efficiency and prosperity, and freed up labor and capital for higher-value activities. These advances in agriculture set the stage for the Industrial Revolution by providing the necessary resources and workforce to fuel ever new industrial endeavors.

The story of Jethro Tull and his seed drill is a testament to the transformative power of technological innovation through not only automation, but standardization. By enabling uniform planting techniques, Tull unlocked new possibilities in agriculture innovation, leading to discoveries at scale, and shaping a revolution that ultimately set the stage for the Industrial Revolution.

Today, we are witnessing similar transformative impacts from innovations in AI, robotics, advanced manufacturing, communications, and cybersecurity. These automation technologies, like Tull’s seed drill, will drive efficiency, but more importantly they will form new standardization platforms, enabling new data-driven insights, accelerating experimentation, and creating new capabilities.

The ripple effects of these advancements and the experiments that they will unpack will reshape our economy and society, much as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions did centuries ago. Achieve this, and we won’t have to be thick as brick, anymore.

As always, we love to partner with exceptional founders and innovative investors. Don’t hesitate to reach out.

Let’s build a better future.

Peter & Maggie