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

Novel technologies must somehow arise by combination of existing technologies.

The word “evolution” has two general meanings. One is the gradual development of something, as with the “evolution” of ballet or the English madrigal. I will call this evolution in the narrow sense, or more usually “development.” The other is the process by which all objects of some class are related by ties of common descent from the collection of

Technologies, in the form of new technical products and processes—think of early automobiles—improved with use and adoption, and this led to further use and adoption, creating a positive feedback or increasing returns to adoption.

Technologies somehow must come into being as fresh combinations of what already exists.

And so the story of this century will be about the clash between what technology offers and what we feel comfortable with.

in a sense an economy was nothing more than the clever organization of technologies to provide what we need.

We are moving from an era where machines enhanced the natural—speeded our movements, saved our sweat, stitched our clothing—to one that brings in technologies that resemble or replace the natural—genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, medical devices implanted in our bodies.

Technology builds out not just from combination of what exists already but from the constant capturing and harnessing of natural phenomena.

found meditations on technology from engineers and French philosophers, studies of the adoption and diffusion of technologies, theories of how society influences technology and technology influences society, and observations on how technologies are designed and subsequently develop.

the Bessemer process,