Who

The chapter provides an overview of diverse conceptualizations and terminologies that have been introduced to describe technology and how it evolves. First, technology is defined as consisting of both hardware and software (the knowledge required to produce and use technological hard-ware). Second, the essential feature of technology – its dynamic nature –is outlined. Technologies change all the time individually, and in the aggregate, typically in a sequence of replacements of older by newer technologies. Finally, the chapter emphasizes the multitude of linkages and cross enhancing interdependencies between technologies giving rise to successive technology “clusters”, which are the focus of the subsequent historical analysis chapters. The most essential terminology distinguishes between invention (discovery), innovation (first commercial application) and diffusion (widespread replication and growth) of technologies. As a simple conceptual model the technology life cycle is introduced. In this model, new technologies evolve from a highly uncertain embryonic stage with frequent rejection of proposed solutions. In the case of acceptance, technology diffusion follows and technologies continue to be improved, widen their possible applications, and interact with other existing technologies and infrastructures. Ultimately, improvement potentials become exhausted, negative externalities apparent, and diffusion eventually saturates, providing an opportunity window for the introduction of alternative solutions. Technology diffusion is at the core of the historical technological changes of importance for global (environmental) change. This is why the main emphasis in this book is on technology diffusion, which also provides the central metric to measure technological change. Less emphasis is placed on the complex microphenomenon of technology selection. The main generic characteristics of technological change are presented and some generalized patterns of technology diffusion are outlined. The chapter concludes with a discussion of sources and mechanisms, i.e., the “who’s and how’s” of technological change. What is technology?1 In the narrowest sense, technology consists of manufactured objects like tools (axes, arrowheads, and their modern equivalents)and containers (pots, water reservoirs, buildings). Their purpose is either to enhance human capabilities (e.g., with a hammer you can apply a stronger force to an object) or to enable humans to perform tasks they could not perform otherwise (with a pot you can transport larger amounts of water; with your hands you cannot). Engineers call such objects “hardware”. An-topologists speak of “artefacts”. But technology does not end there. Artefacts have to be produced. They have to be invented, designed, and manufactured. This requires a larger system including hardware (such as machinery or a manufacturing plant),factor inputs (labour, energy, raw materials, capital), and finally “software”(know-how, human knowledge and skills). The latter, for which the French use the term technique, represents the disembodied nature of technology, its knowledge base. Thus, technology includes both what things are made and how things are made. Finally, knowledge, or technique, is required not only for the production of artefacts, but also for their use. Knowledge is needed to drive a car or use a bank account. Knowledge is needed both at the level of the individual, in complex organizations, and at the level of society. A typewriter, without a user who knows how to type, let alone how to read, is simply a useless, heavy piece of equipment. Technological hardware varies in size and complexity, as does the “soft-ware” required to produce and use hardware. The two are interrelated and require both tangible and intangible settings in the form of spatial structures and social organizations. Institutions, including governments, firms, and markets, and social norms and attitudes, are especially important in determining how systems for producing and using artefacts emerge and function. They determine how particular artefacts and combinations of artefacts originate, which ones are rejected or which ones become successful, and, if successful, how quickly they are incorporated in the economy and the society. The latter step is referred to as technology diffusion.