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The Evolution of Technology (Cambridge Studies in the History of Science)

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In considering the role of major inventions in history, there have been two major views. This book puts forward one of them. Namely that technological progress can be understood in part by analogy to biological evolution, as a series of continuous and incremental innovations, that arise out of the gestalt of the inventor's environment. The authors argue eloquently, with much cited research to buttress their arguments.

Certainly, most inventions are indeed incremental gains in understanding. But one might say that if you take the evolution analogy, there is also a corresponding hypothesis akin to punctuated equilibrium. Namely that sometimes, an inventor or scientist really does make a fundamental discontinuity in understanding. In a way that a continuously innovative procedure would have been extremely unlikely to garner. In science at least, the best examples may be Einstein's General Relativity, and Claude Shannon's Information Theory. Nothing like either was even remotely contemplated by their contemporaries. Ok, granted, the book talks about technology, not science. But at some fundamental level, the discussion of progress encompasses both.

Basalla's 'Evolution of Technology' makes the analogy to biological evolution to explain the development of technologies: the Paleolithic chipping stone becomes the crude stone-and-wood hammer which later becomes a cast-iron hammer which eventually becomes the giant mechanical steam hammer. Of course, thinking of technology in such evolutionary terms can ONLY be analogical--tools don't have genes, and they certainly don't procreate. What tools and technologies have is diversity (a key component in evolutionary change); however, it takes human needs--necessities--to bring about technological developments. This historical combination of technological diversity and human necessity is "evolution" for Basalla.

Basalla's argument is therefore a practical method for thinking about the history of technology--one of a number of different methods (for other alternatives see anything by Arnold Pacey, or the 'Short History of Technology' by Derry and Williams). And in this respect Basalla offers a fine approach. In fact, his book may well be the most readable history of technological progress available, but it is also one that places more weight on a single analogy than the analogy itself may be able to bear.

Fascinating study on the evolution of technology from a variation and selection perspective. The book is written by a historian, but unusually for a historian the book is driven by a strong theoretical perspective.

The author uses the example of barbed wire, but he does not just report a lot of historical details. He also places those details in perspective by using an evoluationary model of technical change. That makes this author 100 times more interesting than had the author that just gives us historical facts.

Heroic historiography of science and technology has dominated well past the moment when historians had despaired of kings and heroic battles as shapers of human history. The lone scientist and inventor still hogs today's narrative. These heroes have been joined lately by visionary entrepreneurs à la Steve JOBS, who "invented the future". Humbug, says the author, and I concur wholeheartedly. This splendid book, easy to read ans understand, explains why.

There are a few million living species. Our material artifacts outnumber them easily. The author is correct in pointing out that diversity of artifacts is a distinguishing characteristic of human life. Necessity is not the reason for this stupendous diversity: "it is a testimony to the fertility of the contriving mind and to the multitudinous ways the peoples of the earth have chosen to live." (pg. 208)

The author explains this diversity of artifacts not so much by invention as by evolution: "the prevalence of artifactual continuity has been obscured by the myth of the heroic inventive genius" (pg. 208) and postulates continuity, even if convoluted and rhyzomic (my term here), rather than directed and progressive. At each point in time the potential for technological innovation is far greater than any society can hope to exploit. Play, fantasy, and emulation all collaborate to create this potential. So do psychological and intellectual factors (Chapt. III). Socio-economic and cultural factors should not be discounted (Chapt. IV).

Selection may be based on economic and military factors - we could call them "necessity" (Chap. V). In many cases, however, social and cultural factors are deeply involved (Chapt. VI). "Ultimately the selection is made in accordance with the values and perceived needs of society and in harmony with its current understanding of "the good life"." (pg. viii).

It is the author's great merit to have chosen Darwinian evolution as the overarching explanatory metaphor explaining the evolution of technology. He should be commended for this. A generation later, and with deeper knowledge of Darwinian processes, new authors are picking up this metaphor is picked up and deepening it (See Alex MESOUDI Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences).

Metaphors constrain as much as they explain. Contrary to speciation we do have discontinuities with artifacts - when they are used for a different purpose, so as when first a hammer was used as a weapon. Chance and whimsy probably play a larger role than they do in nature. Just an example: I've read somewhere that the race between the steam and petrol car was decided by foot-and-mouth disease. An outbreak of this disease among horses led to the elimination of troughs on public highways, which may have spread contagion. Such troughs were used to refuel steam cars, so their refueling stations were eliminated.

The author discounts somewhat path-dependent outcomes and "autonomous technologies". I'd be more reserved. As long as the laws of scarcity are not repealed, efficiency will be a main criterion for technology choice. Once efficiency enters the realm of choice, it tends to overshadow other criteria. It is also the lowest common denominator when values conflict. In fact "efficiency" has become a very hard task-master, ruling us impartially.

Individual agency remains the source of invention in the book's paradigm. Is it really so? If we are truly social animals, creativity is also social - though we may perceive is as personal, nay solitary. I would be wary of the "lone tinkerer" as much as the "lone genius". The act of creation arises from the "meeting of minds" - Newton spoke of standing on the shoulders of giants. It is in dialogue that most brilliant ideas emerge, and one is loath, as the creation unfolds, to assign its original spark to anyone. The inventor's reception of the emergent spark and the kindling and nurturing of the emergent fire assigns authorship to him. Fair enough. If one writes a history of technology, however, the social aspect should be highlighted, for it is the bed from which new ideas spring. Clustering great minds is often a winning proposition - unless the great minds drift into a tiring game of establishing a pecking order among themselves.

The author is liberal in the use of examples and "stories". Some are apt, some fascinating, and the best are "paths not taken" (pg. 189 ff.). Others tend to be overlong. And one quibble: fire antedates the emergence of homo sapiens sapiens by about one million years. Cooking food was a prerequisite for our large brains. In this sense it was not a choice, but a necessity.

This is a great book- it's only two hundred pages long, written without technical language or lengthy end notes, and it goes a great way towards demolishing many conceptions that normal educated people have about the role of technology in our society. The number one myth that Basalla targets is the idea of the 'heroic inventor'- a concept that has been peddled by two hundred years of corporate propaganda and patent law. The second myth that Basalla tackles is science's claims that science is what leads to technological innovation. Finally, The Evolution of Technology provides a variety of theories about why the human need for novelty- which is a universal, rather then western, characteristic, shapes technological innovation.

According to Basalla, technology evolves in that humans make variations of existing things, and the new things supplant the old things in "evolutionary" fashion over time. One of the main underlying assumptions that Basalla uses to construct his model of evolutionary technology is by linking the modern post-industrial revolution led proliferation of machines and inventions to the earliest attempts by humans to make knives and axes from rocks.

Basalla places the responsibility for the modern divergence between western and non-western technological innovation squarely on the Renaissance- Basalla points out that many of what Marx would call "pre-conditions" for technological advance in the 17th and 18th century in the West were firmly established by hits of the Renaissance- indeed the intense craving for novelty which characterizes modern (not to mention post-modern) civilization is a direct product of the Renaissance.

Later, the acceleration of technological innovation that culminated in the industrial revolution was a competition of the general culture of novelty, coupled with specific economic factors, like "supply" and "demand." For example, in 18th century England, Mill owners were paying ALOT for union weavers to super intend the non-automatic weaving process. They paid inventors to create machines, to specifically get rid of these workers.

Basalla is equally skeptical of the technologically based "religion of progress" and spends some time discussing the abject failure of technologies like super sonic air transport, electric cars (!) and nuclear cargo ships.

There are probably some interesting observations to be made about the vinyl record- an example of a technological innovation being discarded and reclaimed- not a frequent occurence.