The Nature of Technology: What it is and How it Evolves: Difference between revisions

As he goes on, Arthur keeps in mind two “side issues” that constantly recur in writings about technology: the analogy to [[Charles Darwin - Author|Darwin]]’s program of {{tag|evolution}}, on one hand, and the analogy to [[Kuhn]]’s theory of scientific revolution on the other. But these are only different articulations of the same idea: that “questions” and “answers” (whether you characterise these as “environmental features” and “biological adaptations which evolve to deal with them”, or “observational conundrums” and “scientific theories which purport to explain them”) are, to a large extent, interdependent: something is only a conundrum if it appears to contradict the prevailing group of theories. What both [[Darwin]] and [[Kuhn]] suggest is that “linear progress”, insofar as it implies a predetermined goal to which an evolutionary algorithm is progressing, is a misconceived idea. Evolutionary development is better characterised as a move ''away'' from the status quo, rather than a move ''toward'' something evidently “better” anything (in hindsight, both will seem the same; to confuse them is a fundamental error).

I had therefore wondered whether Arthur had missed a trick in his account: the fact that any novel solution to an old problem creates ''new questions'' that we did not think — or need — to ask previously. But as he closes, by viewing technology through the prism of the economy (contending the two are independent; the former is not merely the handmaiden of the latter), he nails this, too: