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Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process
3/16/2004
3:35 PM
Paul,
You might want to post the URL for David Hay's book on the evolution of technology to your technology evolution discussion:
Here's the URL:
http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/Tech/FRONT.shtml
Here's a list of the books chapters (all online):
1 HISTORY, EVOLUTION, AND TECHNOLOGY
2 RANKS, REVOLUTIONS, AND PAIDEIAS
3 ENERGETICS
4 INFORMATICS
5 POLITICS, COGNITION, AND PERSONALITY
6 INVESTMENT; with a life-cycle cost analysis of one individual human being
7 APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY
8 THEY DID THE BEST THEY KNEW HOW
And here's some introductory prose I wrote that gives a feel for our (Hays's and mine enterprise):
A central phenomenon of the human presence on earth is that, over the long term, we have gained ever more capacity to understand and manipulate the physical world and, though some would debate this, the human worlds of psyche and society.
The major purpose of the theory that the late David Hays and I have developed (and which I continue to develop) is to understand the mental structures and processes underlying that increased capacity. While more conventional students of history and of cultural evolution have much to say about what happened and when and what was influenced by what else, few have much to say about the conceptual and affective mechanisms in which these increased capacities are embedded. That is the story we have been endeavoring to tell.
Our theory is thus about processes in the human mind.
Those processes evolve in tandem with culture. They require culture for their support while they enable culture through their capacities. In particular, we believe that the genetic elements of culture are to be found in the external world, in the properties of artifacts and behaviors, not inside human heads.
Hays first articulated this idea in his book on the evolution of technology and I have developed it in my papers "Culture as an Evolutionary Arena," "Culture's Evolutionary Landscape" and, most recently, in my book on music, Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture. This puts our work at odds with some students of cultural evolution, especially those who identify with memetics, who tend to think of culture's genetic elements as residing in nervous systems.
. . . .
The story we tell is one of cultural paradigms existing at four levels of sophistication, which we call ranks. In the terminology of current evolutionary biology, these ranks represent major transitions in cultural life.
Rank 1 paradigms emerged when the first humans appeared on the savannas of Africa speaking language as we currently know it. Those paradigms structured the lives of primitive which societies emerged perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Around 5,000 to 10,000 years ago Rank 2 paradigms emerged in relatively large stable human societies with people living in walled cities and written texts being used by various elites.
Rank 3 paradigms first emerged in Europe during the Renaissance and gave European cultures the capacity to dominate, in a sense, to create, world history over the last 500 years. This century has begun to see the emergence of Rank 4 paradigms.
Nothing in our theory limits the number of cultural ranks. Each rank is built on the previous ranks, operating on those cognitive and affective processes and using them as its agents. We see no inherent reason why ever more sophisticated paradigms cannot evolve and come to operate on the paradigms just now emerging. From our point of view, the future event that some, such as Raymond Kurzweil, are calling The Singularity, is but another major transition in cultural evolution, another rank.
. . . .
In The Evolution of Technology Through Four Cognitive Ranks Hays undertakes a book-length examination of technology, including estimates of material and energetic requirements and investment strategies at each cultural rank and a chapter on modes of governance. Hays concludes by considering the problem of using technology which will allow us to sustain life on earth over the long term and contemplates the rise and fall of civilizations.
[Note: While this work is rank theory's most sustained examination of a (more or less) single topic, it may also be the most approachable version of the theory. It was written as a text from which Hays taught a course and includes an extensive bibliography.]
--
William L. Benzon