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RECORD NUMBER: 29 OF 37

Main Title The nature of technology : what it is and how it evolves /
Author Arthur, W. Brian.
Publisher Free Press,
Year Published 2009
OCLC Number 298776864
ISBN 9781416544050; 1416544054; 1439165785; 9781439165782
Subjects Technology--Philosophy ; Technology--Economic aspects ; Technology--Social aspects ; Philosophie ; Technik ; Wirtschaft
Internet Access
Description Access URL
Publisher description http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0913/2009007015-d.html
Sample text http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0913/2009007015-s.html
Contributor biographical information http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0916/2009007015-b.html
Inhaltsverzeichnis http://swbplus.bsz-bw.de/bsz309925894inh.htm
Holdings
Library Call Number Additional Info Location Last
Modified
Checkout
Status
ELBM  T14.A724 2009 AWBERC Library/Cincinnati,OH 05/07/2013
Collation 246 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-231) and index.
Contents Notes
Questions -- Combination and structure -- Phenomena -- Domains, or worlds entered for what can be accomplished there -- Engineering and its solutions -- The origin of technologies -- Structural deepening -- Revolutions and redomainings -- The mechanisms of evolution -- The economy evolving as its technologies evolve -- Where do we stand with this creation of ours? From the Publisher: "More than any thing else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being," says W. Brian Arthur. Yet, until now the major questions of technology have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from-how exactly does invention work? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Why are certain regions-Cambridge, England, in the 1920s and Silicon Valley today-hotbeds of innovation, while others languish? Does technology, like biological life, evolve? How do new industries, and the economy itself, emerge from technologies? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur sets forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology that gives answers to these questions. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology's origins and evolution. It achieves for the progress 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. Conventional thinking ascribes the invention of technologies to "thinking outside the box," or vaguely to genius or creativity, but Arthur shows that such explanations are inadequate. Rather, technologies are put together from pieces-themselves technologies-that already exist. Technologies therefore share common ancestries and combine, morph, and combine again to create further technologies. Technology evolves much as a coral reef builds itself from activities of small organisms-it creates itself from itself; all technologies are descended from earlier technologies. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, and writing in wonder fully engaging and clear prose, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives.