Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

I first came across this phrase two and half years ago in the book "Modern Operating Systems" by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.

Ontogeny is the growth (size change) and development (shape change) of an individual organism; phylogeny is the evolutionary history of a species. (ref: wikipedia)

Tanenbaum quotes this phrase and explains how it has happened with compute science. In this blog I would like to generalise it.


When the radio was invented, it was the hottest medium of mass communication but radio became obsolete once TV was invented. It almost became extinct but suddenly came back as FM Radios became a very common thing in cities.

I have never used a gramophone player but gramophones were circular to allow random access but became extinct after tape drives came into existence. But CDs and DVDs are once again in circular shape. Here the circular shape of the storage media has done a come back.

When I was very small kid, we used to have antenna on the top of our home to receive the DD channels - direct to home is the concept. It became extinct after local cable operators became very strong and they would provide people with lot of channels. But the concept of direct to home with a small antenna on the top has done a come back now.

Writing Diary has reinvented itself as blogs.

Pen-friendship has reinvented itself as anonymous friendships on the net.

My mother told me once that when she was a kid, house holds used to use raagi quite often for food. But after some years it was looked down to have raagi dishes in the middle class families. Now, once again raagi and other such cereals have seen increased consumption due to health reasons.

Man started with raw foods and moved to cooked foods but once again raw food in the form of salads has seen increase in consumption for the same reason as in the previous case.