At the end of the article they ask if there are not already examples of this in existence that we've not recognized as such. What occurred to me was the example of a sailing ship tacking upwind.
What enables shipbuilders and sailors to move a large, heavy object (a ship) into the wind is knowledge. The wind does its level best to move the ship downwind, but the lore of the sea (aka knowledge) enables the shipbuilders to build a vessel that sailors using more knowledge can tack into the wind, albeit slowly and with effort.
To me this seems much like the example in the article, on a macro scale. What say you?
