Why There are no Technological Imperatives

1
Why There are no Technological Imperatives

• Technologies are malleable There is not a
  straight line from invention to ultimate use.
• Foresight is limited by both undue optimism and
  insufficient vision
• Technologies are socially constructed. The first
  uses are usually those that change everyday life
  the least.
• Technologies are path dependent Their origins
  shape their futures.

2
Technologies are Malleable
3
And dead ends are common
South Jersey Magazine, Winter 2002, p. 4
4
Its not just great minds that think alike

• Smithville Problems
• Sudden bumps.
• Only one mon- orail led to con- frontations when
  riders headed in different directions!

Jinnosuke Kajino planned a bicycle railroad.
This plan did not materialize. This railroad
bicycle does not understand even structure. This
plan isdated Aug-ust, 1889. http//www.eva.hi-ho
.ne.jp/ootsu/ant5.html - sept. 15, 2002
5
Foresight is limited by undue optimism
NY Mayor Wagner and friend talking with Mrs.
Ladybird Johnson on picturephone, 1964 Newsday
http//future.newsday.com/5/fbak0507.htm, Sept.
15, 2002
Electro Sparko GE Exhibit, NY Worlds Fair,
1939
http//www.moah.org/exhibits/archives/robots.html,
Sept. 15, 2002
6
Or too little vision The future of e-mail, 1983
Atlanta Journal Constitution, Dec. 18, 1983
7
Technologies often move from business to the home
http//members.aol.com/allenamet/PhonoBooks.html
9/15/02
http//www.acmi.net.au/AIC/EDISON_HIST_PHONO.html
9 15 02
Later, people paid to hear phonograph recordings
in public
Edison with wax cyllinder photograph. The
phonograph was first commercialized in 1888 by
Jesse Lippincott, who thought it would replace
stenographers and notepads. It didnt.
8
Technologies are Path Dependent

• ARPA was initially funded to have military uses,
  which meant it was produced to be durable,
  robust, and hard-to-kill
• When libertarian hackers use that kind of
  technology, they are able to foster very
  different values (decentralization, free speech,
  easy mobilization of collective action, not to
  mention less noble forms of hacking) based on
• Open architecture
• Decentralized computing
• Redundant functions

1. The team that deployed ARPAnet in 1969, including
   John Postel, David Crocker and Vincent Cerf.
2. Arpanet Map from 1973

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How do Technologies Spread?

• Prices go down as demand grows
• People have varying reservation prices for
  purchase
• Shape of diffusion curve reflects

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1) the relationship between price and volume sold
(i.e. how quickly price declines as market grows)
and

• 2) the distribution of reservation prices (price
  elasticity)
• Reservation prices differ from group to group

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Household Penetration , Selected Media (from
Schement 1999)
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What is Distinctive about Information
Technologies? Markets are Networks

• INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES ARE NETWORK GOODS
• Goods or services for which each users utility
  is a positive function of the number of other
  users.

U.S. biotechnology industry network c. 2000,
Walter Powell
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Examples of Network Goods

• Telephone
• Napster/KaZaa/etc.,
• E-Bay
• Adobe Acrobat

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Household Penetration , Selected Media (from
Schement 1999)

• Television and radio
• single purchase
• common culture
• rapid rise
• Telephone and cable
• subscription
• private use
• slower increase