The Erie Riots and the Stacked Adoption problem

In 1853, Erie, Pennsylvania rioted for two months to keep its train tracks the wrong size.

Erie sat where incompatible track gauges met. Trains from New York couldn't run on Ohio rail, so every passenger changed trains and every load of freight came off one car and onto another. This was terrible for the country, but wonderful for Erie. A whole local economy grew up in the friction. Hotels, restaurants, transfer agents.

So when the railroads moved to standardize, Erie fought back. Mayor Alfred King deputized 150 men and had sections cut out of the bridges. The neighboring town of Harborcreek plowed up a level crossing. A US Marshal served an injunction and pointed to the federal seal, and a local official threw it on the ground, stomped it, and declared the heel-mark the official seal of Harborcreek.

It only ended when the governor seized control of the railroad company. The trains ran through without stopping. Erie lost.

I see that same fight inside companies right now.

We spent three years getting people to use AI. That war is won. Netskope watches actual network traffic and claims the average enterprise now sees employees using 60 separate AI tools in a week, up from 35 a year earlier. (The sanctioned ones are rarely the majority.)

Saturation didn't end the adoption problem. It stacked a second one on top of it.

Each tool is a team rebuilding one piece of the process around itself, then needing everyone downstream to fall in line. Nobody voted. And the versions that win aren't winning on merit. They win on who moved first and who defends their railroad gauge hardest.

Every one of those teams is Erie. And every one of them is right…locally.
Erie needed a governor to settle its fight.
Most companies are still waiting for theirs.