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Concept
Technological evolution
Résumé
The term "technological evolution" captures explanations of technological change that draw on mechanisms from evolutionary biology. Evolutionary biology has one of its roots in the book “On the origin of species” by Charles Darwin. In the style of this catchphrase, technological evolution might describe the origin of new technologies.
The combinatoric theory of technological change states that every technology always consists of simpler technologies and a new technology is made of already existing technologies. One notion of this theory is that this interaction of technologies creates a network. All the technologies which interact to form a new technology can be thought of as complements, such as a screwdriver and a screw which by their interaction create the process of screwing a screw. This newly formed process of screwing a screw can be perceived as a technology itself and can therefore be represented by a new node in the network of technologies. The new technology itself can interact with other technologies to form a new technology again. If this process of combining existing technologies is repeated again and again, the network of technologies grows.
The here described mechanism of technological change has been termed “combinatorial evolution”. Others call it “technological recursion”.
Brian Arthur has elaborated how the theory is related to the mechanism of genetic recombination from evolutionary biology and in which aspects it differs.
Technological evolution is a theory of radical transformation of society through technological development. This theory originated with Czech philosopher Radovan Richta.
Mankind In Transition; A View of the Distant Past, the Present and the Far Future, Masefield Books, 1993. Technology (which Richta defines as "a material entity created by the application of mental and physical effort to nature in order to achieve some value") evolves in three stages: tools, machine, automation.
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