I have a theory for this. Please, do not down vote me, I am here with limited English but really good intentions.
QWERTY keyboard is something humanity found a better solution, people have developed better layouts like Dvorak, per example, and world keeps using QWERTY (not my case).
I have studied long time ago that TCP protocol is also not the best protocol, there are much betters and faster, but people keeps using the old TCP for Internet...
I believe when something is already consolidated, it's expensive to change, sometimes it's not worthwhile do update all the consolidated knowledge/investment, even when having better solutions.
World updates consolidated solutions just when the gain really worth it, it's not the case for music notation.
I also agree with you, the music notation could be easier, but I believe they don't upgrade because the masters musicians have mastered it, so they like the actual notation, and they are the fellows with enough knowledge to create a better version. I believe there is others types of notation, but it would need to be used by the masters musicians, and music schools, and universities to start a wave that could replace the actual notation (that already works pretty well).
The argument that Dvorak is superior and that inertia is keeping people from converting has been studied, and while I think there's some element of truth, it doesn't seem particularly compelling, since big disruptive changes occur all the time.
"the best-documented experiments, as well as recent ergonomic studies, suggest little or no advantage for the Dvorak keyboard."
"The trap constituted by an obsolete standard may be quite fragile. Because real-world situations present opportunities for agents to profit from changing to a superior standard, we cannot simply rely on an abstract model to conclude that an inferior standard has persisted. Such a claim demands empirical examination."
Musical notation is a vastly more complex system than keyboard layout, and I don't believe we have a Dvorak of music notation to even compare with. There are no contenders for musical notation that a large group of people believe are superior. So there's no reason to believe that inertia is keeping people from using another notation.
To go one step further, music notation is constantly changing, it has been evolving, adopting and incorporating the best ideas for thousands of years. What reason is there to not start with the assumption that it already took the best changes so far? I have no doubt that if superior ideas for notation develop in the next hundred years, that at the end of it, we'll still call the result 'standard music notation'.
Totally, I understand. And mine wasn't to counter Dvorak specifically, but mention that the inertia theory has been questioned, and also mention that sometimes things are believed to be better by some people but in reality aren't much better if at all for most people. Sometimes inertia is posed as a reason for not changing when in fact the reason is the accepted system is the superior system for the largest number of people.
The latter is my theory about music notation; that inertia is not even at issue yet because there are no serious alternatives.
And inertia might never be an issue, because music notation is a fluidly changing system. TCP and qwerty/Dvorak are static systems that don't ever change, so you can argue about which one's better. Music notation is changing and improving, so it's hard to suggest that people are resisting change, and hard to suggest that something better will supplant it, right?
I agree with your theory in general though, outside of the issue of music notation, and I think a lot of people do. It's just a matter of finding the right examples that clearly demonstrate it. And it would be really interesting to somehow quantify the amount that something needs to be better before people will adopt it. It's like static friction in physics -- it takes more force to get something started moving than it does to keep it moving.
QWERTY keyboard is something humanity found a better solution, people have developed better layouts like Dvorak, per example, and world keeps using QWERTY (not my case).
I have studied long time ago that TCP protocol is also not the best protocol, there are much betters and faster, but people keeps using the old TCP for Internet...
I believe when something is already consolidated, it's expensive to change, sometimes it's not worthwhile do update all the consolidated knowledge/investment, even when having better solutions.
World updates consolidated solutions just when the gain really worth it, it's not the case for music notation.
I also agree with you, the music notation could be easier, but I believe they don't upgrade because the masters musicians have mastered it, so they like the actual notation, and they are the fellows with enough knowledge to create a better version. I believe there is others types of notation, but it would need to be used by the masters musicians, and music schools, and universities to start a wave that could replace the actual notation (that already works pretty well).