Explaining Technology

Roger Koppl, Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, Abigail Devereaux, Brian D. Fath, Wim Hordijk, Stuart Kauffman, Robert E. Ulanowicz, Sergi Valverde, James Herriot

ISBN 10: 1009386255 / ISBN 13: 9781009386258

Published by Cambridge University Press, GB, 2023

About this Item

A long tradition explains technological change as recombination. Within this tradition, this Element develops an innovative combinatorial model of technological change and tests it with 2,000 years of global GDP data and with data from US patents filed between 1835 and 2010. The model explains 1) the pace of technological change for a least the past two millennia, 2) patent citations and 3) the increasing complexity of tools over time. It shows that combining and modifying pre-existing goods to produce new goods generates the observed historical pattern of technological change. A long period of stasis was followed by sudden super-exponential growth in the number of goods. In this model, the sudden explosion of about 250 years ago is a combinatorial explosion that was a long time in coming, but inevitable once the process began at least two thousand years ago. This Element models the Industrial Revolution as a combinatorial explosion.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781009386258

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Explaining Technology
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, GB
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009386255
• ISBN 13: 9781009386258
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 138 grams

About this title

Synopsis

A long tradition explains technological change as recombination. Within this tradition, this Element develops an innovative combinatorial model of technological change and tests it with 2,000 years of global GDP data and with data from US patents filed between 1835 and 2010. The model explains 1) the pace of technological change for a least the past two millennia, 2) patent citations and 3) the increasing complexity of tools over time. It shows that combining and modifying pre-existing goods to produce new goods generates the observed historical pattern of technological change. A long period of stasis was followed by sudden super-exponential growth in the number of goods. In this model, the sudden explosion of about 250 years ago is a combinatorial explosion that was a long time in coming, but inevitable once the process began at least two thousand years ago. This Element models the Industrial Revolution as a combinatorial explosion.