The Nature of Technology Kap 1 Flashcards
1: Questions (10 cards)
In Arthur’s view, how does technology fundamentally distinguish modern society from the Middle Ages, and what would happen if the last six centuries of technology suddenly disappeared?
Technology shapes our wealth, economy, and very way of being; without the advances of the past 600 years—stoves, toilets, printing presses, steam engines, mass production, etc.—our “modern world” would vanish and we would revert to a medieval mode of life, retaining only pre‑modern tools such as water‑mills and cathedrals.
What two deep, unconscious forces generate the modern “unease” Arthur associates with technology?
Humans pin their hope on technology to improve life, yet place their deepest trust in nature after millions of years of adaptation; the collision between hope in technology and trust in nature continually creates tension.
Why does Arthur say we paradoxically “know a great deal and very little” about technology, and what does he mean by the missing “‑ology” of technology?
We possess exhaustive knowledge of individual devices (their parts, circuitry, processes) because we built them, but lack general principles explaining what technology is, how it originates, innovates, or evolves; thus a coherent theory—an “‑ology” comparable to biology—has yet to be formulated.
What limitation arises when Darwinian variation‑and‑selection is applied to technological change?
Darwin’s gradual mechanism cannot account for the abrupt appearance of radically novel artifacts—e.g., jet engines or radar—which do not emerge from small, accumulated tweaks of earlier machines but rely on entirely new operating principles
Define “combinatorial evolution” as Arthur introduces it.
Combinatorial evolution is a self‑bootstrapping process in which new technologies are fashioned by combining existing technologies; these, in turn, become building blocks for further combinations, so the technological stock grows from a few simple elements into many complex ones.
How did Joseph Schumpeter’s early economic theory foreshadow Arthur’s combination idea?
Schumpeter argued that economic development stems from “new combinations of productive means,” meaning progress arises when existing materials and forces are reorganized into fresh configurations—anticipating the concept that technological advances are driven by recombination.
Besides combination, what additional mechanism does Arthur say is essential for genuinely new technologies to arise?
Innovation also depends on continually capturing and harnessing new natural phenomena—such as electromagnetic reflection for radar or nuclear magnetic resonance for MRI—which provide novel effects that can be engineered into artifacts.
List the three foundational principles Arthur will use to build his theory of technology.
(1) All technologies are combinations of components; (2) every component is itself a technology in miniature; (3) every technology harnesses one or more natural phenomena to achieve its purpose.
According to Arthur, how is the character of modern technology shifting, and what metaphor captures this change?
Technology is moving from fixed, stand‑alone industrial processes toward modular, reconfigurable elements (e.g., GPS chips, algorithms) that can be endlessly recombined; Arthur likens this to technology evolving into an open “chemistry” of building blocks.
Why does treating technologies as “black boxes” hinder understanding their evolution, and what investigative stance does Arthur recommend instead?
Seeing devices only from the outside reveals adoption patterns but conceals their shared components and relationships; to trace lineage and evolutionary dynamics we must open the boxes and analyze their internal architectures and common parts.
