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Books on Science - Rethinking What Leads the Way - Science, or New Technology? - NYTimes.com
"n “The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves,” W. Brian Arthur, an economist, reframes the relationship between science and technology as part of an effort to come up with a comprehensive theory of innovation. In Dr. Arthur’s view, the relationship between science and technology is more symbiotic than is generally conceded. Science and technology move forward together in a kind of co-evolution. And science does not lead."
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n “The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves,” W. Brian Arthur, an economist, reframes the relationship between science and technology as part of an effort to come up with a comprehensive theory of innovation. In Dr. Arthur’s view, the relationship between science and technology is more symbiotic than is generally conceded. Science and technology move forward together in a kind of co-evolution. And science does not lead.
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Technologies evolve, Dr. Arthur writes, based on the chaotic and constant recombining of already existing technologies. In this view all technological breakthroughs emerge as novel combinations of existing technological components, which have themselves come into existence through the same process. And, he argues, both technological and scientific progress are driven by humans looking for a means to an end they have already defined.
It is a profoundly social view of innovation. In Dr. Arthur’s view, the “lone inventor” is in fact an invention, part of American economic mythology. The apparently independent genius is always someone who has a deep knowledge of existing technologies and has the inspiration to combine them in new ways.
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Don Norman's jnd.org / Technology First, Needs Last
Technology First, Needs Last
"Necessity is often not the mother of invention. In many cases, it surely has been just the opposite. When humans possess a tool, they excel at finding new uses for it. The tool often exists before the problem to be solved." Nye, D. E. (2006).
I've come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs. I reached this conclusion through examination of a range of product innovations, most especially looking at those major conceptual breakthroughs that have had huge impact upon society as well as the more common, mundane small, continual improvements. Call one conceptual breakthrough, the other incremental. Although we would prefer to believe that conceptual breakthroughs occur because of a detailed consideration of human needs, especially fundamental but unspoken hidden needs so beloved by the design research community, the fact is that it simply doesn't happen.
New conceptual breakthroughs are invariably driven by the development of new technologies The new technologies, in turn, inspire technologists to invent things, not sometimes because they themselves dream of having their capabilities, but many times simply because they can build them. In other words, grand conceptual inventions happen because technology has finally made them possible. Do people need them? That question is answered over the next several decades as the technology moves from technical demonstration, to product, to failure, or perhaps to slow acceptance in the commercial world where slowly, after considerable time, the products and applications are jointly evolve, and slowly the need develops. "
Octopuses use coconut shells as portable shelters - life - 14 December 2009 - New Scientist
"Octopuses have been observed carrying coconut shells in what researchers claim is the first recorded example of tool use in invertebrates.
There is a growing record of tool use in animals and birds, from musical "instruments" made by orang-utansMovie Camera to sponges used by dolphins to dislodge prey from sand.
Now veined octopuses, Amphioctopus marginatus, have been filmed picking up coconut halves from the seabed to use as hiding places when they feel threatened."
Man-Computer Symbiosis
"Man-computer symbiosis is an expected development in cooperative interaction between men and electronic computers. It will involve very close coupling between the human and the electronic members of the partnership. The main aims are 1) to let computers facilitate formulative thinking as they now facilitate the solution of formulated problems, and 2) to enable men and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs. In the anticipated symbiotic partnership, men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking. Preliminary analyses indicate that the symbiotic partnership will perform intellectual operations much more effectively than man alone can perform them. Prerequisites for the achievement of the effective, cooperative association include developments in computer time sharing, in memory components, in memory organization, in programming languages, and in input and output equipment."
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Man-computer symbiosis is an expected development in cooperative interaction between men and electronic computers. It will involve very close coupling between the human and the electronic members of the partnership. The main aims are 1) to let computers facilitate formulative thinking as they now facilitate the solution of formulated problems, and 2) to enable men and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs. In the anticipated symbiotic partnership, men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking. Preliminary analyses indicate that the symbiotic partnership will perform intellectual operations much more effectively than man alone can perform them. Prerequisites for the achievement of the effective, cooperative association include developments in computer time sharing, in memory components, in memory organization, in programming languages, and in input and output equipment.
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The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.
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The Stirrup Thesis
"The issue is the direct causal relationship between the adoption of the stirrup for cavalry and the introduction and development of "feudalism" in Carolingian France. This relationship was expounded at length by Lynn White Jr in his book "Medieval Technology and Social Change". (Available as a Galaxy paperback from Oxford Univ Press, New York , 1966).
There is no question that the introduction of stirrups improved the effectiveness of cavalry. Whatever arguments there may be about the details of the nature of "feudalism" and its growth as a social-political system, it is sufficiently clear that a society in which "feudalism" played a prominent (or defining) role did come to exist in northern France.
The question remains, did the stirrup cause feudalism? White's final passage on this is unequivocal."
The Valley of My Dreams: Why Silicon Valley Left Boston’s Route 128 In The Dust
"A young professor at UC-Berkeley, AnnaLee Saxenian, wrote a book in 1994 which answers this question. At a time when Boston still thought it was the powerhouse of the tech industry, Saxenian declared Boston the loser in the tech race and explained why it would only fall further behind. This book was titled Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. It kicked off a firestorm of criticism from the Boston elite. Saxenian also alienated friends at her alma mater, MIT.
She noted that Silicon Valley had an amazing dynamism about it. There were extensive professional networks, job hopping was the norm, information was exchanged openly, and the culture encouraged risk taking. The Silicon Valley ecosystem supported entrepreneurial experimentation and collective learning. In other words, Silicon Valley was a very open network—a giant social networking site working in analog before the concept of such a thing even existed."
Edge In Frankfurt: THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE— A Talk with Frank Schirrmacher
"Frank Schirrmacher asks, does new technology change human cognition and behavior, and if so, how? This question is a true wake-up question, but its answer is far from obvious. The technophobe might conjecture that new technologies grow smarter while humans grow dumber, like my bank accountant yesterday, who could not calculate 20% of 500 euros without a pocket calculator. The technophile would respond that everything simply gets better, just as eyesight improves with glasses and friendship becomes easier with Facebook.
But there is a more interesting answer: the dynamic symbiosis of technology and mentality. A symbiosis is to the mutual benefit of two different species but requires mutual adaptation. Consider the invention that has changed human mental life more than anything else, writing and, subsequently, the printing press. Writing made analysis possible: One can compare texts, which is difficult in an oral tradition.
Writing also made exactitude possible, as in higher-order arithmetic; without a written form, these mental skills quickly reach their limits. But writing makes long-term memory less important than it once was, and schools have largely replaced the art of memorization with training in reading and writing. So it’s neither loss nor gain, but both. And this means new adaptations between mentality and technology. In turn, new abilities create new tools that support new abilities, and so the spiral evolves."
History of print=technology+culture abreast: Reflections on revolution in mass media+advent of minute media @CShirky @Pierre @JohnBattelle @tropology - esh.it that matters
"The invention Gutenberg's printing press is dated to about 555 years ago -- repeated innovations have spread in waves to popularize mass media in bursts over the following 5 centuries
The initial burst was most directly felt in the Protestant Reformation. Note that it was not alone Gutenberg, but primarily Martin Luther who was responsible for inventing the written language which is today known as German. Therefore, this initial revolution took a very long time to spread throughout the population -- indeed: several generations. The fact that most of Europe was in turmoil for most of this time complicated the adoption of literacy as a technology. Fifty years after the first press, presses could be found in many European cities. Two centuries after the invention of the press, a quite small but nonetheless significant portion of the population could read. Three centuries after the invention of the printing press, the literate portion of the population was large enough such that when Tom Paine wrote "In America, law is king" people understood what that meant: the basis for democracy was (and is) written laws. By the beginning of the 19th Century, the literate portion of the population was quite sizable in most industrialized countries -- and what is more: public schools further promoted literacy."
Edge In Frankfurt: THE AGE OF THE INFORMAVORE— A Talk with Frank Schirrmacher
"We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on. There is one comment on Edge which I love, which is in Daniel Dennett's response to the 2007 annual question, in which he said that we have a population explosion of ideas, but not enough brains to cover them.
As we know, information is fed by attention, so we have not enough attention, not enough food for all this information. And, as we know — this is the old Darwinian thought, the moment when Darwin started reading Malthus — when you have a conflict between a population explosion and not enough food, then Darwinian selection starts. And Darwinian systems start to change situations. And so what interests me is that we are, because we have the Internet, now entering a phase where Darwinian structures, where Darwinian dynamics, Darwinian selection, apparently attacks ideas themselves: what to remember, what not to remember, which idea is stronger, which idea is weaker."
Ellul « Theories of Technology, ENGL 5369
"In class this coming Thursday, I’m presenting these selections from Jacques Ellul’s The Technological System on the autonomy of technology (chapter 33 in the Scharff and Val Dusek reader). Below, I summarize each section, then offer some questions (in bold) for discussion. Of course, don’t let my autonomy determine your discourse – anything is welcome so long as some link, however tenuous, can be detected to the reading in question.
Ellul begins this selection by asserting that technology is, in fact, autonomous: “each technological element is first adapted to the technological system, and it is in respect to this system that the element has its true functionality, far more so than in respect to a human need or a social order” (386)."
The Autumn of the Multitaskers - The Atlantic (November 2007)
"The overdoses, freak-outs, and collapses that converged in the late ’60s to wipe out the gains of the wide-eyed optimists who set out to “Be Here Now” but ended up making posters that read “Speed Kills” are finally coming for the wired utopians who strove to “Be Everywhere at Once” but lost a measure of innocence, or should have, when their manic credo convinced us we could fight two wars at the same time.
The Multitasking Crash.
The Attention-Deficit Recession."
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The overdoses, freak-outs, and collapses that converged in the late ’60s to wipe out the gains of the wide-eyed optimists who set out to “Be Here Now” but ended up making posters that read “Speed Kills” are finally coming for the wired utopians who strove to “Be Everywhere at Once” but lost a measure of innocence, or should have, when their manic credo convinced us we could fight two wars at the same time.
The Multitasking Crash.
The Attention-Deficit Recession.
Can You Hear Me Now? - Forbes.com
tethered life is complex; it is helpful to measure our thrilling new networks against what they may be doing to us as people.
Here I offer five troubles that try my tethered soul.
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Thanks to technology, people have never been more connected--or more alienated
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I have traveled 36 hours to a conference on robotic technology in central Japan. The grand ballroom is Wi-Fi enabled, and the speaker is using the Web for his presentation. Laptops are open, fingers are flying. But the audience is not listening. Most seem to be doing their e-mail, downloading files, surfing the Web or looking for a cartoon to illustrate an upcoming presentation. Every once in a while audience members give the speaker some attention, lowering their laptop screens in a kind of digital curtsy.
In the hallway outside the plenary session attendees are on their phones or using laptops and pdas to check their e-mail. Clusters of people chat with each other, making dinner plans, "networking" in that old sense of the term--the sense that implies sharing a meal. But at this conference it is clear that what people mostly want from public space is to be alone with their personal networks. It is good to come together physically, but it is more important to stay tethered to the people who define one's virtual identity, the identity that counts. I think of how Freud believed in the power of communities to control and subvert us, and a psychoanalytic pun comes to mind: "virtuality and its discontents."
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Technology as scientific productive capacity
What is technology, what does technology mean? One notion, which originated in the Greek téchnē, points to the rational ability to create and produce. This ability is primordial, for to produce the means of living and create meanings of life in work are vital to human existence. Modern technology grew out of ancient téchnē by developing its own reasoning and knowledge into science.
EDGE: NATURAL BORN CYBORGS?
""As our worlds become smarter, and get to know us better and better," writes cognitive scientist Andy Clark, "it becomes harder and harder to say where the world stops and the person begins."
Clark's examines the"potent, portable machinery linking the user to an increasingly responsive World Wide Web," as well as "the gradual smartening-up and interconnection of the many everyday objects which populate our homes and offices." But his interest is not primarily in new technology. "Rather," he writes, "it is to talk about us, about our sense of self, and about the nature of the human mind. The point is not to guess at what we might soon become, but to better appreciate what we already are: creatures whose minds are special precisely because they are tailor-made to mix and match neural, bodily and technological ploys."
According to Clark, we have to give up the prejudice "that whatever matters about mind must depend solely on what goes on inside the biological skin-bag, inside the ancient fortress of skin and skull." He presents cognitive technologies as "deep and integral parts of the problem-solving systems that constitute human intelligence. They are best seen as proper parts of the computational apparatus that constitutes our minds.""
textually.org: Tech addiction 'harms learning'
Technology addiction among young people is having a disruptive effect on their learning, researchers have warned. The BBC reports.
quotemarksright.jpgThe study - Techno Addicts: Young Person Addiction to Technology - was carried out by researchers at Cranfield School of Management, Northampton Business School and academic consultancy AJM Associates.
They used a written questionnaire to examine the nature and the volume of mobile phone calls and text messaging as well as computer use including e-mail, instant messaging and accessing social networking sites. quotesmarksleft.jpg
Read full BBC article.
The full report, Techno Addicts: Young Person Addiction to Technology is published by Cambridge-based Sigel Press as an electronic whitepaper download and is available at www.sigelpress.com.
Pasta&Vinegar » Blog Archive » About non-users of technologies
The article sets off to go beyond the narrow and reductionist vision of the “user”. It clearly acknowledge the notion of “user” as “a discursive formation rather than a natural fact” and “examine use and non-use as aspects of a single broader continuum“. Which approach is somewhat different from earlier work. The main point of the authors consists in highlighting that “interaction reaches beyond ‘use’“. What this means is simply that the experience of technology per se may be shaped and influenced by elements that are outside or beyond specific circumstances of ‘use’“.
Symposium for the Future » Tactics and Haptics and a Future That’s Now (by Holly Willis)
We need to take seriously the significance of a vision of the future, not so much with regard to fantastic scenarios – the stuff of science fiction, which as we know, does play an important role in envisioning the future – but instead in terms of tangible, real-world realities. Why? Because when we talk about “the future” these days, we’re no longer thinking about a long, gently winding road disappearing into a distant horizon, but instead a window (or screen?) pushed up close against our noses. The temporal horizon has shrunk, and the future, as Bruce Sterling said recently at Reboot, is really about a transition happening right now. That transition centers on the shift of power as technologies become pervasive and increasingly portable, and at its most powerful, it’s a transition that can best be furthered through a tactics of technology, when people take their tools and use – or misuse – them to suit specific, and often urgent, needs.
Symposium for the Future » It is easy to fall in love with technology… (by danah boyd)
I want to push back against our utopian habits because I think that they’re doing us a disservice. Technology does not determine practice. How people embrace technology has less to do with the technology itself than with the social setting in which they are embedded. Those who are immersed in a techno-savvy, technophilic community are far more likely to embrace technology than those whose social world is shaped by other patterns of consumption and communication.
Innovative Blades May Have Led to a Stone Age Population Boom: Scientific American
Technological innovations have enabled human cultures to thrive, and now researchers have discovered what might be the oldest example known so far of such an occurrence. These ancient innovations are in the form of miniature stone blades, which appear to have contributed to a population boom in south Asia.
Recent genetic research of people across the globe suggests that roughly 45,000 to 20,000 years ago, one of the most dramatic population booms after humanity dispersed from Africa occurred in southern Asia, leading to "the highest population densities in the world in prehistory," explains Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford in England.
100 Open Technology Courses You Should Have Taken in College | Online Universities.com
You may have already graduated from college, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop learning. For many people, taking advantage of open courseware can be a great way to build skills that can be applied directly to the workplace. Whether you went to college before computers were prevalent, or ended up working a more technologically-focused field than you anticipated, these courses can help you learn about a myriad of technological topics.
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