The Nature of Technology
The first will be the one I have been talking about: that technologies, all technologies, are combinations. This simply means that individual technologies are constructed or put together—combined—from components or assemblies or subsystems at hand. The second will be that each component of technology is itself in miniature a technology. This sounds
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Its standard doctrines were built upon the bedrock principles of predictability, order, equilibrium, and the exercise of rationality;
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology
A technology, I said, is a means to fulfill a purpose: a device, or method, or process. A technology does something. It executes a purpose.
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology
Early technologies form using existing primitive technologies as components. These new technologies in time become possible components—building blocks—for the construction of further new technologies. Some of these in turn go on to become possible building blocks for the creation of yet newer technologies. In this way, slowly over time, many techno
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Economics as a discipline is often criticized because, unlike the “hard sciences” of physics or chemistry, it cannot be pinned down to an unchanging set of descriptions over time. But this is not a failing, it is proper and natural. The economy is not a simple system; it is an evolving, complex one, and the structures it forms change constantly ove
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It follows in turn that the economy is never quite at stasis. At any time its structure may be in some high degree of mutual compatibility, and hence close to unchanging. But within this stasis lie the seeds of its own disruption, as Schumpeter pointed out a hundred years ago. The cause is the creation of novel combinations—novel arrangements—or fo
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The second definition I will allow is a plural one: technology as an assemblage of practices and components.
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology
Viewed this way, a technology is more than a mere means. It is a programming of phenomena for a purpose. A technology is an orchestration of phenomena to our use.
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology
We now have a more direct description of technology than saying it is a means to a purpose. A technology is a phenomenon captured and put to use. Or more accurately I should say it is a collection of phenomena captured and put to use. I use the word “captured” here, but many other words would do as well. I could say the phenomenon is harnessed, sei
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