The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
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.
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
I will call this mechanism evolution by combination, or more succinctly, combinatorial evolution.
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
Technologies in other words consisted of other technologies, they arose as combinations of other technologies.
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
Technologies somehow must come into being as fresh combinations of what already exists.
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
in a sense an economy was nothing more than the clever organization of technologies to provide what we need.
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
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
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Therefore, collectively technology advanced by capturing phenomena and putting them to use.
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
the Bessemer process,
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
And every technology, I realized, was based upon a phenomenon, some effect it exploited, and usually several.
W. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
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.