The Nature of Technology 150.0

W. Brian Arthur digs deep for an evolutionary theory of technology
Professor W. Brian Arthur’s 2009 book takes time to read and appreciate. Like any great book, its insights run in layers.

Its front jacket compares his effort for technology to Thomas Kuhn’s for science (in The Structure of Scientific Revolutionn). Professor Kuhn first suggested ‘paradigm shift’ as the mode for radical change in science.

My view on Professor Brian Arthur’s main thesis in his book is of an older but more significant provenance than a description of technology change. The book describes an initial taxonomy, or better still a good start on systematics, for technology in a similar vein as Carl Linnaeus started, in the early 18th century, for biology. This taxonomy may eventually be of great help in extending a theory of innovation especially for emerging markets!

The good Professor, in fact, gave a slight mention of a virtuous cycle between science and technology and also noted that technology has also been a source of science as also mentioned by Professor Kuhn in his earlier book.

Note: I did mention in an earlier post 10.0 of a similar virtuous cycle between science itself and material science, i.e. the design of scientific instruments, that facilitate the growth of science.

In noting that Technology, like biology, can evolve, Professor Brian Arthur gives a plausible theory based on numerous examples and cases. The taxonomy he describes in the books points to potential opportunities in forecasting the trajectory of technology change.

I can understand his logic of looking of product as process, and vice versa. I was industrial engineering manager for TMX Cebu, makers of Timex watches, in the early 1980s. I can relate to the Herbert Simon example of Tempus (as a Blancpain) and Hora (as a Timex). In fact, by re-connecting movement to final assembly through the successful implementation of JIT from J. Schonberger’s book, I actually innovated by putting together a re-combination of processes in the original spirit of Joseph Schumpeter.

Technology Defined. Professor Brian Arthur defined technology in three ways: a singular one as a means to fulfill a human purpose, a plural one as an assemblage of practices and components, and as a collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture. This definition is significant to me, as one from an emerging market like the Philippines, because availability can be taken to define the strategy choice and consequent opportunity cost of technology acquisition, i.e. through basic research or through scanning-and-adapting. But more of this glimmer of insight in a future post or a journal.

Structure of Technoloogy. He defines the structure of technology also in three parts: as a combination of processes and components, as recursive (as layers of technologies), and more importantly as based on natural phenomenon. The third consideration is particularly important in differentiating technical from social products. The first is the subject of a narrow definition of technology while the second he define as purposed systems.

As with availability above, this third structural consideration, in my mind, is critical for emerging markets in looking at innovations. Professor Peter Drucker, for example, considers social innovations in history like the university by the French, the bank by the Dutch, and the R&D laboratory by Edison and the Americans as legitimately part of innovation while Professor Brian Arthur puts these three under a new concept of purposed systems because not springing from natural phenomena. For emerging markets, I have a hypothesis, that Brian Arthur’s purposed system – my socil innovation – gives a bigger bang for the buck in scarce investment funds than basic research.

Book Application. In new high technology enterprises and in classical industries that are enabled by new technologies like ICT, the good Professor suggests that the entrepreneur is not an optimizer – as the traditional focus of learning in business schools – but one who is trying to make sense of the value of such new technology to the new enterprise, again a new Schumpeterian combination. “Making sense” may be the focus of a new learning school for innovators!

For me, The Nature of Technology is worth a second reading. This is to be expected of a book written by Professor Brian Arthur, a pioneer in the recent revival of increasing returns, as applied to Internet- and Web-enabled enterprises. In the back cover, John Seely Brown, a former director of Palo Alto Research Center (formerly the Xerox Lab) says, “Hundreds of millions of dollars slosh around Silicon Valley everyday based on Brian Arthur’s ideas.”

Indeed, if the new systematics will help define path creation and will extend a new theory of innovation, it is one worth re-reading.

Final Note: His book is written in plain English and not in the Math of the economic modelers. It uses a case research approach to describe the branching of technology, i.e. path creation, and not the simplification and reduction of mainstream and deductive economics. Thus, his theory will have the same difficulty of deriving conclusions from induction. Still, it can give guideposts for discovery-driven planning. A good enough reason to re-read the book.