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

Preface:

  • Author was left with questions unanswered about technology after his college days.
  • realised that new technologies were not “inventions” that came from nowhere. All the examples I was looking at were created—constructed, put together, assembled—from previously existing technologies
  • technology was autopoietic(self creating)
  • other principles besides combination were at work
  • recursive structure - Technologies consisted of parts—assemblies and subassemblies—that were themselves technologies.
  • was based upon a phenomenon, some effect it exploited, and usually several
  • economy arose from its technologies - legal and organisational arrangements that we use to satisfy our needs. It arose from the productive methods and legal and organisational arrangements that we use to satisfy our needs.
  • I wanted discussion of principles behind technology. There was no overall theory of technology.

1. Questions

  • More than anything else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being
  • What is technology? What is it in the deepest sense of its nature? What are its properties and principles? Where does it come from—how does it come into being? How does it develop? And how does it evolve?
  • We know a great deal about technologies in their individual sense, but much less about technology in the way of general understandings

Evolution in Technology:

  • For me, how technology evolves is the central question in technology. Why do I believe this? Without evolution—without a sense of common relatedness—technologies seem to be born independently and improve independently. Each must come from some unexplained mental process, some form of creativity or “thinking outside the box” that brings it into existence and separately develops it. With evolution (if we can “find how it works), new technologies would be birthed in some precise way from previous ones, albeit with considerable mental midwifing, and develop through some understood process of adaptation. In other words, if we could understand evolution, we could understand that most mysterious of processes: innovation. - if we understand the evolution of technology, we can understand how to innovate.
  • A given technology, the railroad locomotive, say, exists at a particular time in many variants. This is because it has different purposes to fulfil, different environments to operate in (different “habitats” to adapt to, if you like), and different designers who use different ideas. From these variations, some perform better and are selected for further use and development; they pass on their small differences to future designs. We can then follow Darwin and say that - Evolution by natural selection
  • Some did not come into being by the steady accumulation of small changes in its predecessors. So explaining “novelty,” meaning abrupt radical novelty, becomes a major obstacle for technology evolutionists

Combinatorial Evolution:

  • but how “heredity” might work in technology.
  • evolution requires a mechanism of "heredity," some detailed connection that links the present to the past
  • What if we looked inside technologies? Would we see anything that would tell us how novelty works in technology? Would we see anything that could yield a proper theory of evolution for technology?
  • Technologies inherit parts from the technologies that preceded them, so putting such parts together—combining them—must have a great deal to do with how technologies come into being.
  • Technologies somehow must come into being as fresh combinations of what already exists
  • Novel technologies must somehow arise by combination of existing technologies.
  • To produce means to combine materials and forces within our reach. To produce other things, or the same things by a different method, means to combine these materials and forces differently.
  • Invention, the constructive assimilation of pre-existing elements into new syntheses.
  • new combination of prior art
  • combination - novelty
  • then the stock of existing technologies must somehow provide the parts for combination.
  • It would seem that the larger the equipment of material culture the greater the number of inventions. The more there is to invent with, the greater will be the number of inventions.
  • “primitive” societies could not invent our modern technologies; they did not possess the necessary ingredients and knowledge of how to work with them. “The street car could not have been invented from the material culture existing at the last glacial period. The discovery of the power of steam and the mechanical technology existing at the time made possible a large number of inventions.
  • novel technologies arise by combination of existing technologies and that (therefore) existing technologies beget further technologies.
  • 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 technologies form from an initial few, and more complex ones form using simpler ones as components.
  • We can say that technology creates itself out of itself.
  • I will call this mechanism evolution by combination, or more succinctly, combinatorial evolution.
  • Combination cannot be the only mechanism behind technology’s evolution.
  • We land in an infinite regress. Something else, something more than mere combination, must be going on to create novel technologies.
  • the constant capture of new natural phenomena and the harnessing of these for particular purposes. At the very start of technological time, we directly picked up and used phenomena: the heat of fire, the sharpness of flaked obsidian, the momentum of stone in motion.
  • Technologies are not thrown together randomly as combinations of existing components, so I will have to provide the detailed mechanics of how combination works.
  • technologies are logically structured, because combination—however it happens—must take place in accordance with that structure.
  • We will have to look at the considerable part human beings, in particular their minds, play in this combination process; new technologies are constructed mentally before they are constructed physically.
  • how human needs call for the creation of new technologies
  • My plan is to start from a completely blank state, taking nothing about technology for granted. I will build the argument piece by piece from three fundamental principles

three fundamental principles:

  • that technologies, all technologies, are combinations.

  • each component of technology is itself in miniature a technology

  • technologies harness and exploit some effect or phenomenon, usually several

  • they are assembled from parts and groups of parts to meet their purpose. And this interior consists of parts and subsystems that themselves are technologies. We can begin to see that novel technologies originate by piecing together existing ones, and of course by capturing phenomena. We can see technologies developing by changing these interior parts. we can see different technologies as possessing internal parts inherited in common from previous technologies.

  • Viewed this way technology begins to acquire a “genetics”.

  • I am proposing, from seeing technologies as stand-alone objects each with a fixed purpose to seeing them as objects that can be formed into endless new combinations, is not just abstract.

  • It is like a highly reactive building block in chemistry—the hydroxyl ion, say—doing little on its own, but appearing in a host of different combinations. Ex: GPS.

  • These can be fitted together in endless combinations that can be configured and reconfigured on the fly for different purposes as conditions demand.

  • Slowly, at a pace measured in decades, we are shifting from technologies that produced fixed physical outputs to technologies whose main character is that they can be combined and configured endlessly for fresh purposes.

  • Technology, once a means of production, is becoming a chemistry.

  • we will see in the next chapter that technologies do share a common logic in the way they are put together

2. Combination and Structure

What is Technology?

  • Oxford English Dictionary: The collection of mechanical arts that are available to a culture to make its economy and society function. Mechanical arts are the methods, practices, and devices a culture uses to make things function.

  • I will give technology three definitions:

    • One:
      • Technology is a means to fulfil a human purpose.
      • For some technologies—oil refining—the purpose is explicit. For others—the computer—the purpose may be hazy, multiple, and changing.
      • As a means, a technology may be a method or process or device: a particular speech recognition algorithm, or a filtration process in chemical engineering, or a diesel engine. It may be simple: a roller bearing. Or it may be complicated: a wavelength division multiplexer. It may be material: an electrical generator. Or it may be nonmaterial: a digital compression algorithm. Whichever it is, it is always a means to carry out a human purpose
    • Two:
      • Technology as an assemblage of practices and components
      • This covers technologies such as electronics or biotechnology that are collections or toolboxes of individual technologies and practices
    • Three:
      • This is technology as the entire collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture
      • The technology thinker Kevin Kelly calls this totality the “technium,”

  • A technology-singular—the steam engine—originates as a new concept and develops by modifying its internal parts. A technology-plural—electronics—comes into being by building around certain phenomena and components and develops by changing its parts and practices. And technology-general, the whole collection of all technologies that have ever existed past and present, originates from the use of natural phenomena and builds up organically with new elements forming by combination from old ones.

  • I will have more to say about these second and third categories of technology in the chapters ahead, particularly on how the collective of technology evolves.

  • But because technologies-singular—individual technologies—make up this collective, I want to focus on them for the rest of this chapter

  • A technology, I said, is a means to fulfil a purpose: a device, or method, or process. A technology does something. It executes a purpose . To emphasise this I will sometimes talk of a technology as an executable.

  • Even Dam/Bridge is also executable.

  • A technology supplies a functionality. This is simply the generic task it carries out.

  • Certainly methods and processes both transform something by a series of stages or steps, so we can lump these together as logically similar.

  • devices and processes - seem to be different things.

  • A device always processes some thing; it works on that thing from beginning to end to complete the needed task.

  • All devices in fact process something.

  • Can we view methods and processes as devices? The answer is yes.

  • Processes and methods—are sequences of operations. But to execute, they always require some hardware, some sort of physical equipment that carries out the operations.

  • Processes are devices if we include the equipment that executes them.

  • A technology embodies a sequence of operations; we can call this its "software." And these operations require physical equipment to execute them; we can call this the technology’s "hardware." If we emphasize the “software” we see a process or method. If we emphasize the “hardware,” we see a physical device.

  • Technologies consist of both, but emphasizing one over the other makes them seem to belong to two different categories: devices and processes. The two categories are merely different ways of viewing a technology"

  • When we speak of a technology—the cable-stayed bridge, say—are we speaking of it as an instance of a specific device or method or as the idea of that device or method. We can answer this if we realize this question occurs everywhere we abstract and label things. In these cases it is perfectly normal to switch between physical instance and concept as context demands.

  • we can switch back and forth between the particular and abstract as needed. This yields a bonus. If we accept something as an abstract concept, we can easily zoom in and out conceptually.

  • we find the abstract concept useful because aircraft have certain common parts and architectures we can expect and talk about.

How Technologies Are Structured?

  • Technologies in this regard are like some category of animals—vertebrates, say. Vertebrates differ widely in their anatomical plans and outside appearance; a hippopotamus looks nothing like a snake. But all share the structure of a segmented spinal column, and organs such as chambered hearts, livers, paired kidneys, and a nervous system.
  • A technology therefore is a combination of components to some purpose.
  • Such assemblies, or subsystems, or sub technologies (or stages, in the case of process technologies) are groups of components that are largely self-contained and largely partitioned off from other assemblies.
  • always organized around a central concept or principle: "the method of the thing," or essential idea that allows it to work
  • To be brought into physical reality a principle needs to be expressed in the form of physical components.
  • a technology consists of a main assembly: an overall backbone of the device or method that executes its base principle.
  • This backbone is supported by other assemblies to take care of its working, regulate its function, feed it with energy, and perform other subsidiary tasks.
  • a jet engine and a computer program are very different things. One is a set of material parts, the other a set of logical instructions. But each has the same structure. Each is an arrangement of connected building blocks that consists of a central assembly that carries out a base principle, along with other assemblies or component systems that interact to support this.
  • All parts must be carefully balanced. Each must be able to perform within the constraints—the range of temperatures, flow rates, loads, voltages, data types, protocols—set by the other parts it interacts with. And each in turn must set up a suitable working environment for the component assemblies that depend on it.
  • Each must therefore be designed to fit in a balanced way with the other parts.
  • Together these various modules and their connections form a working architecture. To understand a technology means to understand its principle, and how this translates into a working architecture.

Why Modularity?

  • Simon’s point is that grouping parts into assemblies gives better protection against unexpected shocks, more ease of construction, and more ease of repair. We can extend this and say also that grouping parts allows for separate improvement of the component organs of a technology: these can be split out from the whole for specialised attention and modification. It allows for separate testing and separate analysis of working functions: their assemblies can be “slid out” to be probed or replaced separately without dismantling the rest of the technology. And it allows for swift reconfiguration of the technology to suit different purposes: different assemblies can be switched in and out when needed.
  • Separating technologies into functional groupings also simplifies the process of design.
  • If designers were to work with tens of thousands of individual parts they would drown in a sea of details. But if instead they partition a technology into different building blocks—the arithmetic processing element of a computer, the memory system, the power system—they can hold these in their minds, concentrate on them separately, and see more easily how these larger pieces fit together to contribute to the working of the whole. Partitioning technologies into groupings or modules corresponds to “chunking” in cognitive psychology, the idea that we break down anything complicated (the Second World War, say) into higher-level parts or chunks that we can more easily understand and manipulate.
  • It costs something—mental effort at the very least—to partition the components of a technology into separate functional units. So it pays to divide a technology into such modules only if they are used repeatedly—only if there is sufficient volume of use.
  • Modularity, we can say, is to a technological economy what the division of labor is to a manufacturing one.
  • The way a functional unit is organised changes too as it becomes more used. A module or assembly begins typically as a loose grouping of individual parts that jointly execute some particular function. Later in its life, the grouping solidifies into a specially constructed unit.
  • what starts as a series of parts loosely strung together, if used heavily enough, congeals into a self-contained unit. The modules of technology over time become standardised units

Recursiveness and Its Consequences:

  • From our combination principle, a technology consists of component parts: assemblies, systems, individual parts. We could therefore conceptually break a technology into its functional components (ignoring whether these are supporting or central) starting from the top down. Doing this would give us the overall technology, its main assembles, subassemblies, sub-subassemblies, and so on, until we arrive at the elemental parts.
  • The hierarchy that forms this way is treelike: the overall technology is the trunk, the main assemblies the main branches, their subassemblies the sub-branches, and so on, with the elemental parts the furthest twigs. (Of course it is not a perfect tree: the branches and subbranches—assemblies and subassemblies—interact and crosslink at different levels.)
  • the more complicated and modular the technology, the deeper the hierarchy.
  • “Each assembly or subassembly or part has a task to perform. If it did not it would not be there. Each therefore is a means to a purpose. Each therefore, by my earlier definition, is a technology. This means that the assemblies, subassemblies, and individual parts are all executables—are all technologies.”
  • “Technologies, in other words, have a recursive structure. They consist of technologies within technologies all the way down to the elemental parts”
  • “So far, recursiveness sounds abstract”
  • “But we have arrived at the bottom of the hierarchy, at the elemental level of executables. Notice, beneath the jargon of the individual assemblies, the recurring theme: systems that consists of systems, interconnected, interacting, and mutually balanced. Executables that consist of executables, or technologies that consist of technologies, hierarchically arranged all the way down to the level of individual elements”
  • “We could follow the hierarchy of executables upward as well”
  • “We can enter this hierarchy at any level—at any component system—and find it too is a hierarchy of executables in action. The system is self-similar. Of course executables at different levels differ in type and theme and appearance and purpose”
  • “one most technology thinkers have taken—sees a technology as something largely self-sufficient and fixed in structure, but subject to occasional innovations”
  • “In the real world, technologies are highly reconfigurable; they are fluid things, never static, never finished, never perfect.”
  • "There is no characteristic scale for technology."
  • “This does not mean there is no sense of “higher” and “lower” in a technology. Technologies at a higher level direct or "program" (as in a computer program) technologies at lower levels"
  • "And the elements (technologies) at lower levels determine what the higher levels can accomplish"
  • “This gives us backing for the assertion that all technologies stand by for use as potential components within other new technologies.”
  • “And what gives a particular technology its power? Certainly it cannot quite be its principle; that after all, is only an idea. It must be something else."

3. Phenomena:

  • "some particular set of natural effects"
  • "A technology is always based on some phenomenon or truism of nature that can be exploited and used to a purpose"
    • “I say ‘always’ for the simple reason that a technology that exploited nothing could achieve nothing”
  • “his principle says that if you examine any technology you find always at its centre some effect that it uses"
  • natural effect.
  • “Phenomena are the indispensable source from which all technologies arise. All technologies, no matter how simple or sophisticated, are dressed-up versions of the use of some effect - or more usually, of several effects.”
  • “what you are looking for is some phenomenon, some effect, that varies with the thing you are trying to measure. As with all technologies, you need some reliable effect to build your method from."
  • “it illustrates the use of effects put together to achieve a purpose."
  • "Are a principle and a phenomenon the same thing? The answer is no"
  • "A technology is built upon some principle, 'some method of the thing,' that constitutes the base of idea of its working; this principle in turn exploits some effect (or several) to do this. Principle and phenomenon are different."
  • “That certain objects—pendulums or quartz crystals—oscillate at a steady given frequency is a phenomenon. Using this phenomenon for time keeping constitutes a principle, and yields from this a clock”
  • “Phenomena are simply natural effects, and as such they exist independently of humans and of technology. They have no “use” attached to them. A principle by contrast is the idea of use of a phenomenon for some purpose and it exists very much in the world of humans and of use."
  • “before phenomena can be used for a technology, they must be harnessed and set up to work properly. Phenomena rarely can be used in raw form. They may have to be coaxed and tuned to operate satisfactorily, and they may work only in a narrow range of conditions. So the right combination of supporting means to set them up for the purpose intended must be found.”
  • "It is the orchestration of a collection of phenomena-induction, electron attraction and repulsion, electron emission, voltage drop across resistance, frequency resonance-all convened and set up to work in concert for a specific purpose.”
  • “Nearly always it is necessary to set up these phenomena and separate them by allocating them to separate modules”

The Essence of Technology:

  • “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, seized, secured, used, employed, taken advantage of, or exploited for some purpose. To my mind though, ‘captured and put to use’ states what I mean the best.”
  • “a technology consists of certain phenomena programmed for some purpose. I use the word “programmed” here deliberately to signify that the phenomena that make a technology work are organised in a planned way; they are orchestrated for use”

A technology is a programming of phenomena to our purposes.

  • “This programming need not be obvious. And it need not be visible either, if we look at the technology from the outside”
  • The engine is now visibly a combination of executables
  • This is more impressive, but still something we can take for granted. But look deeper again, this time beneath what is visible. The power-plant is really a collection of phenomena “programmed” to work together, an orchestration of phenomena working together
  • ”All these phenomena—scores of them—are captured, encapsulated in a myriad of devices, and replicated, some many thousands of times in as many thousands of identical components."
  • “That all these phenomena are caught and captured and schooled and put to work in parallel at exactly the right temperature and pressure and airflow conditions; that all these execute in concert with exactly the right timing; that all these persist despite extremes of vibration and heat and stress; that all these perform together to produce tens of thousands of pounds of thrust is not to be taken for granted. It is a wonder.
  • “Seen this way, a technology in operation—in this case a jet engine—ceases to be a mere object at work. It becomes a metabolism. This is not a familiar way to look at any technology. But what I mean is that the technology becomes a complex of interactive processes—a complex of captured phenomena—supporting each other, using each other, “conversing” with each other, “calling” each other much as subroutines in computer programs call each other. The “calling” here need not be triggered in some sequence as in computing. It is ongoing and continuously interactive. Some assemblies are on, some are off; some operate continuously. Some operate in sequence; some operate in parallel. Some are brought in only in abnormal conditions.”
  • "It is a programming of phenomena for a purpose. A technology is an orchestration of phenomena to our use."
  • "Phenomena, I propose, are the "genes" of technology.
  • “New phenomena—new technological “genes”—of course add to this fixed set as time progresses. And phenomena are not combined directly; first they are captured and expressed as technological elements which are then combined. Biology programs genes into myriad structures, and technology programs phenomena to myriad uses."

Purposed Systems:

  • “we have really been talking about a class of systems: a class I will call purposed systems. This is the class of all means to purposes, whether physically or non-physically based” “All this seems to be a digression. But it does establish the scope of what we are talking about. We can admit musical structures, money, legal codes, institutions, and organisations—indeed all means or purposed systems—to the argument even if they do not depend upon physical effects. With suitable changes, the logic I am laying out also applies to them.”

Capturing Phenomena:

  • “how do we uncover phenomena and capture them for use in the first place?”
  • “I like to think of phenomena as hidden underground, not available until discovered and mined into. Of course they are not scattered about randomly underground, they cluster into related families, each forming a seam or vein of useable effects” and the members of these groups are unearthed piece by piece, slowly and haphazardly, over a lengthy period. Effects nearer the surface, say that wood rubbed together creates heat and thereby fire, are stumbled upon by accident or casual exploration and are harnessed in the earliest times. Deeper underground are seams such as the chemical effects. Some of these are uncovered by early adepts, but their full uncovering requires systematic investigation. The discovery of the most deeply hidden phenomena, such as the quantum effects of nuclear magnetic resonance or tunneling or stimulated emission, require a cumulation of knowledge and modern techniques to reveal themselves. They require modern methods of discovery and recovery—they require, in other words, modern science.
  • “How then does science uncover novel effects? Certainly it cannot set out to uncover a new effect directly; that would be impossible - a new effect is by definition unknown. Science uncovers effects by picking up intimations of something that operates differently than expected. An investigator notices something here, a lab ignores something there but picks up the trace later. "Sometimes the spoor is picked up by theoretical reasoning."
  • “A new effect declares itself always as the byproduct of some endeavour."
  • “This makes it look as if science uncovers new effects piece by piece, each independently. Actually, this is not quite the case. Earlier effects discovered within a particular family of phenomena lead to the discovery of later ones."
  • “A family of effects forms a set of chambers connected by seams and passageways, one leading to another. And that is not all. The chambers in one place—one family of effects—lead through passageways to chambers elsewhere—to different families. Quantum phenomena could not have been uncovered without the prior uncovering of the electrical phenomena. Phenomena form a connected system of excavated chambers and passageways. The whole system underground is connected."
  • “Once phenomena are mined, how are they translated into technologies?”
  • ”Not every phenomenon of course is harnessable for use, but when a family of phenomena is uncovered, a train of technologies follows.”
  • “In this way the uncovering of phenomena builds itself out of itself. Phenomena cumulate by bootstrapping their way forward: effects are captured and devices using these effects are built and uncover further effects."

Technology and Science:

  • “Technologists use science because that is the only way we understand how phenomena at the deeper layers work."
  • "Technologists use scientific ideas much as politicians use the ideas of defunct political philosophers"
  • "that science not only uses technology, it builds itself from technology"
  • “Science, after all, is a method: a method for understanding, for probing, for explaining.”
  • “science is a form of technology”
  • "Indeed, it is possible to imagine science without technology"
  • “Science without technology would be a weak science. It would be little more than the thought-based science of the Greeks.”
  • “Technology builds from harnessing phenomena largely uncovered by science. And equally science builds from technology—or, better to say, forms from its technologies—from the use of the instruments and methods and experiments it develops. Science and technology "co-evolve in a symbiotic relationship. Each takes part in the continued creation of the other, and as it does, takes in, digests, and uses the other; and in so doing becomes thoroughly intermingled with the other. The two cannot be separated, they rely completely on one another. Science is necessary to uncover and understand deeply buried phenomena, and technology is necessary to advance science."
  • "Nature possesses many sets of phenomena and over centuries we have mined into these for our purposes"
  • “Some of these effects have been captured and set to use in the form of technologies. These in turn become potential building blocks for the creation of yet further technologies. And some technologies (in the form of scientific instruments and methods) help uncover yet further phenomena. There is a nice circle of causality here. We can say that novel phenomena provide new technologies that uncover novel phenomena; or that novel technologies uncover new phenomena that lead to further technologies. “Either way, the collectives of technology and of known phenomena advance in tandem.
  • None of this should be taken to mean that technologies always proceed directly from phenomena. Most technologies are created from building-block components that are several steps removed from any direct harnessing of an effect. The Mars Rover is put together from drive motors, digital circuits, communication systems, steering servos, cameras, and wheels without any direct awareness of the effects that lie behind these. The same is true for most technologies. Still, it is good to remember that all technologies, even planetary vehicles, derive ultimately from phenomena. All ultimately are orchestrations of phenomena.
  • One last thing. It should be clear by now that technologies cannot exist without phenomena. But the reverse is not true. Phenomena purely in themselves have nothing to do with technology. They simply exist in our world (the physical ones at least) and we have no control whatever “over their form and existence. All we can do is use them where usable. Had our species been born into a universe with different phenomena we would have developed different technologies. And had we uncovered phenomena over historical times in a different sequence, we would have developed different technologies. Were we to discover some part of the universe where our normal phenomena did not operate, then our technologies would not operate, and we could only probe this part of the universe by literally inventing our way into it. This sounds like a science fiction scenario, but it takes place on a small scale closer to earth when we try to operate in space with only one effect missing: gravity. Methods for doing even the simplest things—drinking water, for instance—have to be rethought.”

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