The state of technological and social change: Impressions

Globalization, Economic Development and Inequality, 2004

A cheap input as vehicle of diffusion Diffusion is self-reinforced A new paradigm as a quantum jump in potential productivity for all A techno-economic paradigm as an overarching logic for the technology systems of a period Difficult assimilation: The shaping of a paradigm takes decades 3. STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN THE ECONOMY AND SOCIO-INSTITUTIONAL INERTIA Institutional inertia: The upswing delayed The example of the previous socio-institutional framework Long waves as coupling and decoupling of the system 4. TECHNO-ORGANISATIONAL PARADIGMS AS GUIDELINES FOR CHANGE IN THE SOCIO-INSTITUTIONAL SPHERE The wide space of the possible The notion of a paradigm can be understood on three levels General principles: Many forms of application The politics of transition

Routledge eBooks, 2022

This chapter is about radical innovation and disruptive technological change. Discovering the nature and mechanisms of disruptive technological change can help to understand the long-run dynamics of innovation and map profound transformation in socioeconomic systems. The chapter considers four concepts essential for the understanding radical and disruptive technological change: long waves, techno-economic paradigms, general purpose technologies (GPTs), and disruptive technologies. We conclude with some insights on the emerging technologies in the latest techno-economic paradigm. The tools and concepts given here remain the cornerstone of a useful theory of innovation and change even in our current complex sociotechnical landscape.

Technikgestaltung zwischen Wunsch und Wirklichkeit, 2003

The social shaping of technology (SST) perspective has developed as a response to techno-economically rational and linear conceptions of technology development and its consequences. It has brought together analysts from different backgrounds with a common interest in the role of social and political action for socio-technical change. Thus, SST is a broad term, covering a large domain of studies and analyses concerned with the mutual influence of technology and society on technology development. In this chapter we emphasise the political dimensions of social shaping, through a focus on the socio-technical processes entailed in technology development and change. Our perspective is based on the understanding that technological development is a social process. As such, it unfolds through processes with political implications, involving actors, occasions and strategies that help bring about technological change. Our intention is to pursue a broader view on the political dimensions of technological decision-making, and a broader treatment of socio-technical space, maintaining a focus on the inclusion and exclusion of actors, salient issues, and how they are dealt with and resolved.

in P. Kalantzis-Cope and K. G. Martin (eds) Properties of Technology: Mapping Emerging Digital Spaces in Contemporary Society, 2011

2020

Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2016

I share the concerns raised in Vogt's commentary, 'How Fast Should We Innovate?' Controlling the pace of technological change is one of the epochal challenges of this era, and I offer suggestions to facilitate scholarly inquiry, collective deliberation, and public policy. Two framing moves Most writing on the subject of pace focuses on individuals' and subcultures' subjective experiences: John Dewey observed a 'mania for speed' (1927) long before Alvin Toffler discovered 'future shock' (1970) and nearly a century prior to Judy Wajcman's STS perspective in Pressed for Time (2014). 'We're always chasing time,' averred a sleep-deprived longhaul trucker, surveilled by bosses while at the mercy of nearly impossible schedules (Menzies 2005, 36). Energy-extraction boomtowns have long been recognized as socially dysfunctional (Freudenburg 1984)and much of the world now resembles a boomtown. Contemporary commerce, communication, and transport are said to have generated a hyperculture, 'a swirling vortex that today sucks into itself all elements of individual experience, thought and emotion' (Bertman 1998, 84). I am disposed to accept this general picture although I would prefer greater nuance in the claimsmore acknowledgement, for example, that hours actually spent on work and housework have remained fairly steady (albeit unfairly distributed by gender and social class). And some of the technosocial disruption has been beneficial for some peoplerelaxing formerly overbearing constraints from marriage, religion, in-grouping, and social convention. However, my main quarrel with stories about the 'no time' problem is a classic level-of-analysis issue: preoccupation with micro-level symptoms distracts from study of the institutions and political-economic practices causing the difficulties. What is driving the pace of innovation, where are the potential brakes, and what would it take to selectively decelerate somewhat adroitly? A second important reframing of pace-of-change thinking is to stop using the pronoun we, because we in fact rarely innovatethey do. Corporations with the highest R&D spending are based in the U.S. (11), Germany (2), Great Britain (2), Switzerland (2), France (1), Japan (1), and South Korea (1) (Strategy& 2016). California venture capital and Silicon Valley predominate among start-up firms globally; the U.S. military determines more than half of weaponry R&D; and those driving permissionless innovation (Dotson 2015) are disproportionately young, male, affluent, and whitewith the blindered standpoints that come from a narrow demography.

European Economic Review, 1994

This article explores a monopolist's incentive to distort the direction of technological change. For strategic reasons, the monopolist might invent and employ a socially undesirable technology. In so doing, he might jeopardize not only the vigor of product-market competition but also the development of socially desirable methods of production. As a result, technological dynamism cannot be considered a social virtue until its direction is compared with the social optimum.

Wisconsin Law Review, 2013

Francis Bacon stressed centuries ago that innovation is inevitably influenced by mental and social constraints. It is only by exposing and understanding these constraints, Bacon argued, that society can fully benefit from scientific innovation. But while historians and sociologists of science and technology have long appreciated how institutional norms shape the course, pace, and content of innovation, legal scholarship on patent law has all but ignored this insight. In this Article, I seek to complement traditional law and economic analyses of patent law by developing a sociological and historical approach that focuses in concrete detail on the ways in which scientific knowledge, and thus innovation, is made, maintained, and modified. Drawing from sociological analysis of historical case studies of innovation, I focus on factors that affect the timing of innovation. I argue that understanding why some scientific advances and innovations take a long time to develop or be recognized and endorsed by the scientific community provides an opportunity to reshape patent law as a policy lever to mitigate such delays. Conversely, understanding why other types of innovation occur rapidly and spark swift follow-on innovation suggests circumstances in which broad patent rights may impose particularly high social costs. This socio-historical approach is responsive to recent Supreme Court patent law jurisprudence, exemplified by KSR v. Teleflex, that directs courts to take a flexible approach to patentability by considering “the circumstances surrounding the origin of the invention.” By teasing out social factors that influence the pace of innovation, I offer a framework for taking such considerations into account in the design and application of patent law. I also propose specific changes to patent law doctrine that flow from this framework.

International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, 2018

coevolution of technology, business and society george rzevski the open university and digital ecosystems ltd. abstract social changes created during technological paradigm shifts in the past are reviewed with a view to establishing patterns of changes that can help in forecasting the social change that are likely to follow the current technological revolution.