The Nature of Technology - What It Is and How It Evolves

1: Questions

“Our deepest hope as humans lies in technology; but our deepest trust lies in nature.”
Combinatorial evolution – technologies come into being as fresh combinations of what already exists
A similar idea had been arose as early as 1910 in the context of the economy – Schumpeter proposed (going against equilibrium economics) that an economy could generate growth without any external influence, by coming up with new combinations of existing resources

Three definitions of technology:
- A means to fulfil a human purpose
- As assemblage of practices and components
- The entire collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture
A technology is an executable
A technology provides functionality
Technologies are structured recursively – each technology consists of sub-technologies which in turn consist of sub-sub-technologies (and so on)

“Phenomena are the indispensable source from which all technologies arise”
In order to attain certain principles, humans orchestrate different phenomena
Most technologies are created from building-block components that are several steps removed from any direct harnessing of an effect

Domains form languages
New technological artefacts constructed from components of a domain are utterances in that domain’s language
The points at which domains interact with each other tend to be expensive, e.g. photonics to electronics and back again, loading and unloading freight ships

Engineering is as creative as any other profession, it’s just that the results aren’t always visible/obvious (in the same way that art is)
“Memes, as Dawkins originally conceived of them, are units of cultural expression such as beliefs, or catchphrases, or clothing fashions”
Successful engineering solutions behave like memes in the sense that they are copied and replicated and propagate throughout society in different technologies

Imagine a chain connecting an exploitable effect(s) and a problem to be solved – the links of this chain are the systems and assemblies that make the solution possible
Creating these links (and sub-links) is invention
Technologies can arise via two general journeys:
- A need for something uncovering a phenomenon
- A discovered phenomenon being harnessed to create a technology
Origination in technology is not fundamentally different from science or technology because all three are purposed systems:
- Tech: conceptual methods
- Science: explanatory structures
- Mathematics: truth structures consistent with basic axioms

The Darwinian nature of technology is apparent not so much in the market’s selection of superior products but by a technology’s selection of sub-technologies to solve its internal design problems
Structural deepening is the process by which a technology becomes more and more complex as its sub-technologies are enhanced to optimise phenomena and additional sub-technologies and assemblies are added to mitigate for physical (or other) deficiencies of components
Adaptive stretch is the extension of a technology beyond its intended purpose rather than using a new technology due to the perceived cost of moving to the new technology (lock in)
Kuhn’s cycle of of scientific paradigms is allocable to the development of technologies:
- Structural deepening
- Lock in
- Adaptive stretch
- (And repeat until a new, “simpler” technology/paradigm appears as a feasible replacement)

Technology in its entirety is autopoietic (self-generating)
The possible combinations of technologies increases exponentially as the number of different technologies increases
There isn’t always demand for new technologies but there are opportunity niches that technologies can fill by coming into existence
When a technology is replaced there is an avalanche of destruction – its sub-technologies are no longer needed (and so on)
Likewise when a new technology appears there are winds of opportunity creation (from Schumpeter’s “gales of creative destruction”)
In biology variation and selection are the norm for evolution, combination is much rarer due to a Darwinian bottleneck
Three things drive the creation of novel technologies:
- New capturing of natural phenomena
- Fresh combinations of existing technologies
- Needs in the economy/opportunity niches

The economy is “the set of arrangements and activities by which a society satisfies its needs”
The economy is not a container for technologies, the economy is formed by technologies – the economy is an expression of its technologies
In the short term the economy appears fixed (a container of its technologies) but in the long term the economy is seen to be a product of its technologies
Schumpeter refers to the process by which an economy that may appear to be in stasis undergoes change from within by finding novel combinations as industrial mutation
Structural change occurs is measured in decades
A fourth driver of new technologies: problems beget solutions which beget further problems (and so on), e.g. burning carbon-based fuels

The vocabulary we use to describe the behaviour of technologies is starting to include biological words, e.g. self-healing, ergo technology is becoming more like biology
Companies are now drawing their competitive advantage from their ownership of technical expertise, rather than resources
We are seeing many (some fleeting) alliances between companies with mutually beneficial expertise (when it isn’t feasible for companies to develop the necessary expertise in-house) – this often takes the form of an acquisition