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

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 {{author|Brian Arthur}}’s treatise is a little ponderous but, all the same, is most encouraging in its [[Epistemology|philosophical]] disposition — assuming as it does the “recursivity” of society and technology, rather than holding the (usual) view that one is strictly a product of the other. This is a [[path-dependent]] model for not just {{t|technology}}, but society and even knowledge itself.
-But for some, this is dangerous stuff. It leads in turn to uncomfortable conclusions and opens the door to all that crazy post-modern stuff.
+But for some, this is dangerous stuff. It  opens the door to all that crazy post-modern stuff.
-Because he doesn't have to, Arthur doesn’t go there, but he does cast a kindly glance at {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}. (I like people who cast kindly glances at {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}: these days they’re few and far between).
+Because he doesn’t have to, Arthur doesn’t go there, but he does cast a kindly glance at {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}. (I like people who cast kindly glances at {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}: these days, they’re few and far between). He doesn’t have to go there because {{t|technology}} by definition, operates entirely ''within'' the “paradigm” in which it was implemented: if “{{tag|science}}” is its philosophical principle, {{tag|technology}} is its practical implementation — the sort of thing {{Author|Nancy Cartwright}} would call a “[[nomological machine]]”: an intellectual construction designed to give a dependable result in constrained circumstances. The machine not only prescribes the parameters for a “successful” result, but constrains the environment and operating circumstances in which it generates outcomes, to ensure the result is within those parameters, and then, reliably, forces that outcome. (A technology that cannot force an outcome within its own parameters for a successful result is simply “a machine that doesn’t work”).
-Arthur doesn’t have to go there (at first) because {{tag|technology}}, as implemented, is almost by definition infra-paradigmatic: if “{{tag|science}}” is its philosophical principle, {{tag|technology}} is its practical implementation — very much the sort of thing {{Author|Nancy Cartwright}} would call a [[nomological machine]]: a construction designed to give a dependable result in a constrained set of circumstances, where the machine not only prescribes the parameters for a “successful” result, but constrains the environment and operating circumstances in which outcomes are generated to ensure the result is within those parameters, and then, reliably, forces that outcome. (A technology that is unable to force an outcome within its own parameters for a successful result is simply a machine that doesn’t work).
+But this leaves a gap: If technology is just the practical implementation of [[normal science]], it it hard to explain how innovation happens. As Arthur puts it:
-But this leaves a gap. If technology is merely the practical implementation of [[normal science]], it has a hard time explaining innovation. As Arthur puts it:
 :''Combination [of existing technologies] cannot be the only mechanism behind technology's evolution. If it were, modern technologies such as radar or magnetic resource imaging ... would be created out of bow-drills and pottery firing techniques, or whatever else we deem to have existed at the start of technological time.''
-The problem is how to account for the “onward” development of technology. Arthur is clear that it is [[path-dependent]] (“had we uncovered phenomena over historical times in a different sequence, we would have developed different technologies”) but even this insight, I think, risks under-cooking the importance of the {{tag|narrative}} conversation: it is not just that combinations of technologies through time let us develop existing theories and give us better and more powerful and enabling answers to our original questions; they prompt completely ''new'' questions: they afford ''new'' ways of looking at the world. New ways of looking generate new opportunities, and new problems.
+How do we account for the “onward” development of technology? Arthur is clear that it is “[[path-dependent]]” (“had we uncovered phenomena over historical times in a different sequence, we would have developed different technologies”) but even this risks under-cooking the importance of the {{tag|narrative}} conversation: it is not just that combinations of technologies through time let us develop existing theories and give us better and more powerful and enabling answers to our original questions; they prompt completely ''new'' questions: they afford ''new'' ways of looking at the world. New ways of looking generate new opportunities, and new problems.
 This is a significant point.
-For example: prior to the digital age, categorisation of information was a difficult and inherently limited (and, actually, biased) thing: the physical nature of information storage (books) dictated a single {{tag|taxonomy}} and a single hierarchy, and required commitment to a single filing taxonomy (without owning more than one copy of a book, you can’t file it in two places). Digitisation changed that forever: the [[Dewey decimal system]], brilliant in its design though it undoubtedly was, solves a problem we no longer have, but at the cost of forcing our hand in a way we no longer need. Digital technology has enabled us to entirely re-evaluate what information really is.
+For example: before the digital era, information was hard to categorise, and any taxonomy was inherently limited (and, actually, biased): the physical nature of information storage (books in a library) necessitated a single filing {{tag|taxonomy}} —the [[Dewey decimal system]] — with a single hierarchy: unless you have more than one copy of a book, you can’t file it in two places. Digitisation changed that forever:  Dewey solved a problem we no longer have, but at the cost of forcing our hand in a way we no longer need. Digital technology has enabled us to entirely re-evaluate what information really is.
-As he goes on, Arthur explicitly 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).
+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).
 Yet, and while Arthur clearly recognises this, he continues to frame his explanatory theory in terms of “forward progress”, as if that is the “conundrum” to be solved. Even our traditional conception of it has this the wrong way round: “the invention of the jet engine” wasn't what was going on; it was “finding a way to fly in thinner air”. The jet engine was the first solution arrived at that met that purpose (as, in a totally different context, {{author|Richard Susskind}} elegantly points out, when you shop for a Black & Decker, it isn’t a drill you want; it’s a hole). Technology (and science, and biology) isn’t an end, it’s a means. The more ''means'' you have, the more ''ends'' are available to you.