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Book summary: The Nature of Technology

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1400"] The Nature of Technology[/caption]

- Each technology exploits a natural phenomena thereby exposing a functionality to further human purpose
- Principal - the idea of how a phenomena is captured
- One technology builds on another (or a collection them) - recursion
- Components - components and practices
- functionality assumes modularity simplifies design
- Types of phenomena

Physical - what goes on in the physical environment
- Behavioral - what goes on in a human brain
- Organization - the emergent dynamics when a group of human brains interact

- Science is the practice of probing Nature to identify phenomena through the use of technology
- Engineer is a process of solving the problem to create a solution by making technology work.
- Invention is mental association of problem with principal and technology
- A technology stack when required to perform at higher levels needs to be modified to get pass bottlenecks

Internal replacement
- Structural deepening

can become an issue. Example

military organization
- legal system
- administrative system

- Mechanisms

Lock-in - preventing easy migration to new technology
- adaptive stretch - adopting new technology to augment existing ones

- Opens the door for disruption

- Technology buildout tends to be concentrated in one country or region - concentration of talents (people with deep craft) and the forming of a culture

who to talk to
- how to get something fixed
- what to ignore
- what theories / principals to look to

- An economy (how resources are exchanged) is the expression of its technology

Economy is neurons, flesh and blood
- Technology is the skeletal structure