The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
man-made technologies evolve from previous man-made technologies, and are not invented from scratch. This is a key characteristic of evolutionary systems: the move to the ‘adjacent possible’ step.
Matt Ridley • How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
We know that human innovation rarely designs things from scratch, but jumps from one technology to the ‘adjacent possible’ technology, recombining existing features. So
Matt Ridley • The Evolution of Everything
In the same way, innovation in one technology borrows whole, working parts from other technologies, rather than designing them from scratch. The inventors of the motor car did not have to invent wheels, springs or steel.
Matt Ridley • How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
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
... See moreW. Brian Arthur • The Nature of Technology
Almost every foundational technology ever invented, from pickaxes to plows, pottery to photography, phones to planes, and everything in between, follows a single, seemingly immutable law: it gets cheaper and easier to use, and ultimately it proliferates, far and wide. This proliferation of technology in waves is the story of Homo technologicus—of t
... See moreMustafa Suleyman • The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma
Nelson notes that while Physical Technologies have clearly had an immense impact on society, the contributions of Social Technologies have been equally important and in fact, the two coevolve with each other.36 During the Industrial Revolution, for example, Richard Arkwright’s invention of the spinning frame (a Physical Technology) in the eighteent
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