Definition of technology 1 page essay
hsn7077
technologyandtechnologicalevolution.pptEarth Systems Engineering and Management
CEE 400
Week 6: Technology and Technological Evolution
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Technology and Resource Depletion
“A famine in petrol appears to be inevitable in the near future, owing to the fact that demand is increasing at a rate much greater than the rate of supply . . . . It is evident from the whole tone of the report that the committee expects to find in denatured vegetable spirits [alcohol] the fuel of the future.”
From Nature, 8 August 1907, quoted in “100 Years Ago,” Nature 448:653, August 9, 2007
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Crossties treated with chemical preservatives, U.S.
20
40
60
80
100
1890
1920
1910
1900
1940
1930
1950
1960
“Unless the vast forests of the United States can be made ready to meet the vast demands which this [economic] growth will inevitably bring, commercial disaster, that means disaster to the whole country, in inevitable. The railroads must have ties… if the present rate of forest destruction is allowed to continue, with nothing to offset it, a timber famine in the future is inevitable.”
President Theodore Roosevelt, speech to the American Forest Congress, 1905
Adapted from J. Ausubel, regularities in Technological Development: An Environmental View, Technology and Environment, Washington, D.C., National Academy Press, 1989.
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Based on E.S. Deevey, Jr., “The Human Population. “ Scientific American. 203:3 (September 1960), 194-206; and M.G.Wolman, “The Impact of Man’, Eos, December 25, 1990, 1884-1886.
Population Growth and Stages of Human Cultural Evolution
~ 100 million
Tools
(Circa 106 to
104 years Ago)
Agriculture
(Circa 104 to
250 years Ago)
Industry / Science
(Circa 250 years
Ago to Present)
~ 6 billion
Growth
Stable
Crash
?
?
?
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Population of England and Wales, 1650-1960, in millions
From Abbott Payson Usher, A History of Mechanical Inventions (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.: Revised Edition, 1954)
1950
1900
1850
1800
1750
1700
1650
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Year
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Growth of Yeast in Culture
Based on E.P. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology (Phliadelphia: W.B. Saunders Co., 1959) p. 186.
600
450
300
150
750
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Time (Hours)
Amount of Yeast
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Human Technological Evolution
Based on Ian McNeil, ed., 1990, An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology (London: Routledge); Chris Freeman and Francisco Louca, 2001, As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
| AGE | DATES (APPROX) | SOCIAL CONTEXT | TECHNOLOGY CONTEXT | DOMINANT MATERIAL |
| Eolithic (Dawn Stone Age) | Ca. 10M ybp | Evolving bands | Origins of tool making | Wood, stone, and bone |
| Paleolithic (Old Stone Age | 5M to 12K ybp | Hunter-gatherer | Hand axes and shaped materials | Stone |
| Mesolithic (Mid Stone Age) | 12K to 7K ybp | Hunter-gatherer | Origins of blade technology | Stone, clays |
| Neolithic (New Stone Age) | 6K to 3K ybp | Agrarian revolution/towns | Beginning of copper use | Stone to metal |
| Chalcolithic (Bronze Age) | 3K to 1.5K ybp | Early urbanization based on agriculture | Tin (therefore bronze) discovered ca 3000 ybp | Bronze |
| Iron Age | 1.5K to 500 ybp | Development of urban civilizations | Development of technocultural systems, homo faber | Iron |
| Technolithic | 500 ybp to now | Urbanization of species and post-urban (virtual) societies | Industrial technology leading to NBRIC (nano/bio/robotics/ ICT/cogsci) | Specialty materials, nanotech culminates control of material world |
Rate of Innovation
First Wave
Second Wave
Third Wave
Fourth Wave
Fifth Wave
Steam Rail Steel
Electricity Chemicals Internal-combustion engine
Petrochemicals Electronics Aviation
Digital networks Software New media
Water Power Textiles Iron
1785
1845
1900
1950
1990
1999
2020
60 years
55 years
50 years
40 years
30 years
Technology System Waves
Biotechnology Infosphere Engineered Earth Systems
Based on Joseph Schumpeter and Nikolai Kondratieff
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Technological Change as Cultural Change
| Kondratiev Wave | Core/ Periphery (dates of wave) | Core industrial organiza-tion | Time construct | Capital and finance | Critical infra-structure | Consump-tion | Religious response |
| Industrial Revolution (textiles, water) | UK/Europe and colonies (1780-1840) | Factory | “time-thrift”, “day at work” model | (UK) capital from land-owners and aristocracy | Water, canals | Hereditary elite, some trickle down | Romantic and Cartesian shift of Sacred (e.g., to nature) |
| Rail, steam, and coal | UK and US/Europe (1850-1895) | Joint stock company (railroads) | Coordinated regional times by firm (rail) | Development of modern finance (RR) | Local and national rail (coupled to telegraph) | Capitalists, some trickle down | Technological sublime in US (from Eden to New Jerusalem) |
| Steel, heavy engineering, electricity | US, Germany/ Europe (1895-1930) | National firm, professional management (Taylorism) | Global time structure; mfg time models | Modern corporate finance | Rail, ocean shipping, roads | Capitalists, evolution of labor as class | Calvinism and rise of capitalism |
| Automobile, petroleum, mass culture | US/Europe and Asia (1930-1970) | Mass production system | Time as integrator of mfg/life | Mass credit, consumption financing (GMAC) | Roads, increasingly air | Egalitarian consumption, mass consumers in core | Calvinism into consumerism |
| Information, communica-tion technology | Global corp and elite/US (1970-2000) | Network-centric firm | Asynchron-ous and 24/7, globalization of production | Finance as ICT; complex risk management | Networks | Rise of meritocratic elite, some trickle down | Growing fundamental-ist backlash |
| Nano, bio, robotics, ICT, cogsci | Global elite/global proletariat (2000- ) | Virtual, rapid adapt, network | Asynchron-ous, time as order of events | Global demat- erialized financial networks | Conversion of physical into global information networks | Meritocratic elite (shift from financial to quality of life consumption) | Fundamentalism as reaction against rapid change, disen-franchisement of non-elite |
Technology Level/Policy Response Matrix
| Policy Response Technology Level | Goals | Policy Response |
| Level I | Defined; technology and goals tightly coupled | Yes or no to technology and the explicit goal |
| Level II | Defined but loosely coupled, with additional interfering independent variables | Explicit decision, then deal with unintended consequences |
| Level III | Uncertain and often conflicting; most important may be unconscious or implicit | Real time technology and policy assessment (RTTPA) |
Policy Response Matrix: Vaccine Example
| Policy Response Technology Level | Goals | Policy Response |
| Level I | Reduce individual’s risk of disease | Agreement on goal, and therefore on technology: implement technology |
| Level II | Increase economic growth in developing countries by reducing costs of disease | Implement technology, but that policy alone may not lead to stated goal |
| Level III | Improve human well-being through vaccine technology | Real time technology and policy assessment (RTTPA) – what other systems are affected by vaccination programs; how do they respond? |
Railroad Technology Implications
- Required uniform, precise system of time, thus created “industrial time” and associated culture
- Created need for, and co-evolved with, national scale communications systems
- Created modern managerial capitalism (modern accounting, planning, and administration systems)
- Created modern capital and financial markets (railroad construction was the single most important stimulus to industrial growth in Western Europe by 1840s)
Railroad Technology Implications
- Instantiated and validated US integration of religion, morality and technology: “If God had designed that His intelligent creatures should travel at the frightful speed of 15 miles an hour by steam, He would have foretold it through His holy prophets. It is a device of Satan to lead immortal souls down to Hell.” (Ohio School Board, 1828).
- Transformed landscapes at all scales: Chicago existed, and structured the Midwest economically and environmentally, because of railroads.
- Changed US economic structures from local/regional business concentrations to trusts (scale economies of national markets)
Railroad Technology Implications
- Changed US power structure, enabling US as continental power, and Manifest Destiny – even with beginning of Civil War, Lincoln pushed Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 through Congress; the South had blocked transcontinental railroad.
- Shifted military power: Prussia, later Germany, after 1848 experience designed entire civilian railroad structure for military purposes (e.g., railroad cars that shifted from freight to troop transports; railroad platforms a mile long so entire regiments could be loaded easily) – led to Prussian victories at Konnigsgrad, 1870 Franco-Prussian War, and with the Schlieffen Plan, helped cause WWI.
- Changed US culture (from Jeffersonian agrarianism, an Edenic teleology, to technology-driven New Jerusalem)
Emerson: Technology as Nature
- “When its errands are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New England and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step into harmony with nature.”
- “Readers of poetry see the factory-village and the railway, and fancy that the poetry of the landscape is broken up by these; for these works of art are not yet consecrated by their reading; but the poet sees them fall within the great Order not less than the beehive or the spider’s geometrical web. Nature adopts them very fast into her vital circles, and the gliding train of cars she loves like her own.”
Emerson, “Art” and “The Poet” (essays), quoted in D. E. Nye, 1994, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge: MIT Press), p. 61.
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“Passage to India”: New World, New Jerusalem
Walt Whitman, 1868, selected sections
Singing my days,
Singing the great achievements of the present,
Singing the strong light works of engineers,
Our modern wonders (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)
In the Old World the east the Suez Canal,
The New by its might railroad spann’d . . .
I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier,
I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying freight and passengers,
I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle,
I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world . . .
“Passage to India”: New World, New Jerusalem
Walt Whitman, 1868, selected sections
After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists,
the chemists, the geologist, ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.
Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O scientists and inventors, shall be justified, . . . .
This whole earth, this cold, impassive, voiceless earth, shall be completely justified, . . . .
Nature and Man shall be disjoin’d and diffused no more,
The true son of God shall absolutely fuse them . . . .
Idealized Technology Life Cycle Model
Source: Based on Arnulf Grubler, Technology and Global Change (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1998)
Technology System Performance
New technology
Replacement or senescence
Saturation
Exponential growth phase
Diffusion
Basic research
Applied research
Invention
Innovation
Time (Qualitative scale)
Core
Rim
Periphery
Geographic spread
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1769 - 30 pounds of coal per horsepower 1776 - 7.5 pounds
1850 - 2.5 pounds
Source: D. Rejeski
Modular Innovation
Radical Innovation
Incremental Innovation
Combinatorial Innovation
DC-3
0
1840
1860
1880
1900
1920
1960
SECTOR EMPLOYMENT, 1840 to 2000
20
40
60
80
100
1940
1980
2000
Employment (Percent of Labor Force)
Agriculture
Services
Manufacturing
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The Internet Economy: Macro versus Micro Economics - Aggregate Supply and Demand Curve
Q3
P1
P3
P2
Q1
Q2
D1
D2
Price
Quantity Produced
- Economic Output is a function of a few critical inputs; capital, labor, information, resources including energy and land
- Initially, price level is P1 and amount produced is Q1, with supply curve S1 and demand curve D1
- Cost of input- information, for example- fall across the economy
- Aggregated supply curve shifts right to S2
- Price falls to P2, and quantity produced increases to Q2
- If demand curve shifts right as well (because customers want to buy more, or their real or perceived incomes rise, for example), prices will rise from P2, but even more, Q3, will be produced.
S2
S1
Adapted from the Economist, “The New Economy,” center section, September 23, 2000
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Primary Energy Substitution in the United States
102
101
100
10-1
10-2
1800
1850
1950
1900
2000
2050
0.99
0.50
0.90
0.10
0.01
Wood
Coal
Oil
Nuclear
Natural Gas
f/(1-f)
Adapted from J. Ausubel, regularities in Technological Development: An Environmental View, Technology and Environment, Washington, D.C., National Academy Press, 1989.
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Major U.S. Transport Infrastructure
1780
1800
1850
1900
1950
2000
55 yr
55 yr
Percent of Length of Final Saturation Level
Year
20
40
60
80
100
Canals
Railways
Roads
Adapted from J. Ausubel, regularities in Technological Development: An Environmental View, Technology and Environment, Washington, D.C., National Academy Press, 1989.
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