Economic and Social Dynamics in Technology Adoption

From: jimruttshow8596

The adoption and integration of technology within a society are deeply intertwined with its economic and social dynamics. New technologies, including “social technologies” which are essentially “software we implement in our minds and in society as a whole,” can radically reshape societies over time [00:13:31].

Technology and Society: A Co-Dependent Relationship

Material technology and society are “completely and utterly mutually co-dependent” [00:51:53]. A technology must be able to be “absorbed productively into a social niche” for societies to instantiate it; otherwise, it will be “left on the shelf” and forgotten [00:52:13].

Historical Examples

• Roman Concrete: The Romans invented concrete, a crucial material for their society, but the knowledge was lost with the fall of the Western Empire and not redeveloped until the 19th century [00:03:46]. This indicates that the level of building technology did not recover to the Roman standard until the 19th century, highlighting a significant loss of technological capability due to societal decline [00:04:00].
• Steam Engine: The steam engine was reinvented at least twice, once in Hellenistic Greece and again in 18th century England [00:52:51]. In Greece, Heron’s steam engine “didn’t take off” and did not result in massive social transformation [00:53:03]. In England, Watt’s steam engine “completely transformed” society because the society was able to integrate it into its shared understanding of how things are done [00:53:08].
• Japanese Firearms: In the 16th century, Japan, after a civil war, banned the use of firearms, leading to 300 years of peace but no advancement in gun development [00:53:28]. When Commodore Perry arrived with advanced guns in the 19th century, that society had to transform almost completely to remain viable [00:53:48]. This illustrates how societal choices can leave technologies on the table due to a lack of a “socioeconomic niche” for their practitioners [00:54:19].

Invention vs. Innovation

A crucial distinction in technology adoption is between “invention” and “innovation” [00:54:42].

• Invention: The creation of the fundamentals of something (e.g., the early Greek steam engine used for toys) [00:54:45].
• Innovation: The process of building out the necessary components and systems for an invention to become socially important (e.g., Edison’s light bulb, which involved refining generators, distribution lines, and building a power grid) [00:55:07]. Edison built institutions like General Electric to turn his inventions into innovations [00:56:07].

Social Technologies and their Societal Impact

Social technologies are not merely cultural aspects but have functional roles [00:14:04]. They can be compared to communication protocols or machines designed for specific purposes [00:14:16].

• Capitalism: The introduction of social technologies for capitalism transformed societies [00:14:39]. However, these technologies can be “recombined” and are “atomistic,” meaning what appears together in one civilization (like capitalism and Protestantism) might not need to in another (like capitalism in Japan) [00:15:36].
• Coordination Costs: Social technologies lower social coordination costs [00:27:24]. Examples include:
  • Market mechanisms: These reveal and profit from information, increasing shared information [00:28:48].
  • Unified language: The French state’s imposition of a common language from the 15th to 19th centuries allowed a nation of 60 million people to communicate, facilitating trade, bureaucracy, and military scaling [00:29:12].
  • Organized religions: During the Axial Age, new religions provided standardized mythologies understood across vast empires, aiding political and trade systems [00:30:17].

The Role of Individuals vs. Evolution in Social Technology Development

There is a debate on whether social technologies are primarily “invented/designed” by individuals (Great Founders) or emerge through evolutionary processes [00:16:18].

• Design/Foundation: Some argue that “great founders” introduce social technologies in “all-formed” ways, leading to “very rapid social transformation” (e.g., creation of a new religion) [00:17:51].
• Evolution: Others contend that an evolutionary process with “darwinian competition” and “step-at-a-time improvements” drives change, as seen in the development of early online social media services like The Source and CompuServe [00:19:17].

It is suggested that societies without “creative competition” or “intellectual or business or industrial golden ages” tend to stagnate for centuries [00:21:33].

Manipulation of Human Psychology

Late modernism, particularly from the 1920s, saw the purposeful manipulation of human psychology become an important tool in marketing [01:11:51]. Figures like Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew) and John Watson (a leading psychologist) applied insights from behavioral psychology to advertising [01:12:07].

• Marketing as Education: Marketing can be seen as a “mass education program” that induces desires by saturating media with depictions of desirable role models and how to use products [01:14:07].
• Erosion of Cultural Reservoirs: This strategy, while enabling the rapid rollout of new domestic or workplace economies, might be “self-exhausting” and eroding deeper cultural reservoirs by promoting behavioral shortcuts without deep understanding [01:14:37].
• Ethical Shift: The ethos of companies has shifted from a concern for “right and wrong” in business to prioritizing profitability and legality, and eventually, to valuing profit over legality if the costs of being caught are less than the benefits [01:16:16]. This represents a significant societal impact.

Impact of Technology on Organizational Dynamics

The ability of organizations to adapt to changing circumstances is key to their functionality [01:18:35].

• Live Players vs. Dead Players:

  • Live players: Operate in a “responsive, creative way” with active perception of their environment [01:20:21].
  • Dead players: Execute a pre-existing script without needing to perceive their environment, risking failure when circumstances change [01:20:31]. Apple is cited as a possible “dead player” if it primarily focuses on economic optimization rather than fundamental innovation [01:21:29].

• Innovation and Stagnation: The rise of “startup culture” in the US, while productive, might indicate a weakness in older, larger companies’ ability to adapt [01:41:43]. Instead of talented engineers rising within existing companies to redirect resources, they create new ones [01:41:52]. This aligns with Clayton Christensen’s “innovator’s dilemma,” where internal dynamics in established firms can frustrate disruptive innovations [01:43:31].

Challenges of Modern Information Environment

The internet has led to a radical information asymmetry where individuals are more transparent to organizations, but individuals know little more about these organizations [01:37:04]. The pursuit of censorship and algorithmic management of public opinion, like Facebook’s hunter-killer algorithms, can suppress diverse intellectual work [00:31:36]. This makes maintaining an “accurate social reality” or “epistemic commons” non-trivial [00:43:34]. A functional society needs “constructive critique” and a bridging of “material reality and social reality” [00:48:42].