The Nature of Technology: What it is and How it Evolves

W Brian Arthur

ISBN 10: 1416544054 / ISBN 13: 9781416544050

Published by Free Pr, 2009

About this Item

More than anything else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being, says W. Brian Arthur. Yet despite technology's irrefutable importance in our daily lives, until now its major questions have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Does technology, like biological life, evolve? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur answers these questions and more, setting forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology's origins and evolution. Achieving for the development of technology what Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress, Arthur explains how transformative new technologies arise and how innovation really works. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives. The Nature of Technology is a classic for our times.

Seller Inventory # CIN1416544054G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Nature of Technology: What it is and How it Evolves
• Publisher: Free Pr
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1416544054
• ISBN 13: 9781416544050
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Leading scientific theorist W. Brian Arthur puts forth the first complete theory of the origins and evolution of technology, in a major work that achieves for the invention of new technologies what Darwin’s theory achieved for the emergence of new species.

Brian Arthur is a pioneer of complexity theory and the discoverer of the highly influential "theory of increasing returns," which took Silicon Valley by storm, famously explaining why some high-tech companies achieve breakaway success. Now, in this long-awaited and ground-breaking book, he solves the great outstanding puzzle of technology—where do transformative new technologies come from?—putting forth the first full theory of how new technologies emerge and offering a definitive answer to the mystery of why some cultures—Silicon Valley, Cambridge, England in the 1920s—are so extraordinarily inventive. He has discovered that rather than springing from insight moments of individual genius, new technologies arise in a process akin to evolution. Technology evolves by creating itself out of itself, much as a coral reef builds itself from activities of small organisms.

Drawing on a wealth of examples, from the most ancient to cutting-edge inventions of today, Arthur takes readers on a delightful intellectual journey, bringing to life the wonders of this process of technological evolution. The Nature of Technology is the work of one of our greatest thinkers at the top of his game, composing a classic for our times that is sure to generate wide acclaim.

About the Author

W. Brian Arthur is a professor at the Santa Fe Institute and a visiting researcher at Xerox Parc. Formerly a professor of economics at Stanford University, he was awarded the prestigious Schumpeter Prize in economics and the inaugural Lagrange Prize in complexity science. He has been profiled in Fortune and Wired and has written for Scientific American, Science, and the Harvard Business Review. He lives in Palo Alto, California.