The Ongoing Technological System

By Smaïl Aït-El-Hadjait

The high level of innovation currently transforming our society and its technological dynamics can be seen as a second wave of innovation of the third technological system, which emerged in the late 1970s.

This book discusses the concept of technological systems, focusing on the tools used for formalizing the organization of technology in society and its dynamics of evolution.

The author uses these tools to characterize the contemporary technological system and to model its specific dynamics. In doing so, he raises questions about the continuity of the current technological system, and its capacity to generate powerful innovatory movements.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Sep 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781119467052

Book preview

Introduction

A major technological transformation is disrupting the world more than ever. How can this pressing movement be understood? Through the analysis of the organization of the technological space of society in a given period, which is characterized as a technological system and which designates a conceptual framework that not only allows for the understanding of the technological organization but also of the nature and forms of the innovation flow that it generates.

How then does the contemporary technological system relate to contemporary innovation dynamics? Two major historical phases help establish this relationship. The first phase corresponds to a considerable technological change noticeable around 1975, accompanied by an economic and energy crisis which has been generally designated as the third industrial revolution. The second movement is a very powerful current of innovation that has existed since the mid-1990s, commonly known as the digital revolution, sometimes combined with the notion of environmental transition which now appears to be a major factor for technological recomposition.

The period of emergence of this system, characterized as the third technological revolution, inaugurated a new technological system which is also called the third technological system. It is characterized by the dominance of new generic technologies, such as information technology whose nature had changed with the development of the microprocessor in 1975 and with the emergence of new transformation principles of biotechnologies, based on a whole series of discoveries in the field of genetics. The third field of generic technologies is in the field of materials, with the development of composite problems. Finally, in the face of the energy crisis, the diversification of energy technologies and the emergence of renewable energies reshape this generic technology, that is, energy.

Since then, this technological system has continued to deploy itself, undergoing a large number of mutations at the turn of the century, more precisely new combinations within information technologies, because of the double movement generated by digitalization and generalized connection. This era of convergence has provided new products such as the smart phone, networks and in particular the Internet, driven by progress in knowledge of genetics and new materials. How can we apprehend and understand the powerful current of innovation of the past 20 years, which resulted thereof, if not in terms of a global evolution of the technological system which we were confronted with? It is therefore by facing the challenge of the intensity of the technological mutation in particular, which we are observing at the moment, that we begin the task of presenting and analyzing this contemporary technological system.

In order to achieve this task, we will outline its conceptual framework, which is the approach of technological systems [GIL 78], and which we have contributed to formalize [AÏT 89, AÏT 02, AÏT 14, AÏT 15] and whose principles of construction and analysis in addition to the explanatory efficiency for the current period are presented in the first chapter.

The current technological system is the culmination of a historical evolution, marked by ruptures, technological revolutions and by a historical succession of these systems. This historical perspective, from the middle ages, includes the great pre-industrial technological system followed by the first industrial technological system, known as the English Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th Century. It will constitute the second chapter.

It is important to present this second industrial technological system, because it is therefrom that the contemporary technological system has emerged through a technological crisis, which has enabled its deployment. We will present this original framework and its rupture in the third chapter.

Once this third system is structured by new generic technologies, two organizational processes of the new system in use will be identified, the deployment of the new technological applications and the restructuring of traditional technologies of the old system. This double movement has often been characterized as the microelectronic revolution, because of its major transformation operator, the chip. This background technological movement will produce transformative interactions with productive and corporate structures and even forms of knowledge production. The fourth chapter will be dedicated to describing and analyzing this initial phase of the third technological system.

The second wave of innovation, which is a genuine qualitative leap of technological development, will be the subject of the fifth chapter which will aim to highlight its components, performance jumps in generic technology, the generation of new processes, systems and new products creating new functions.

This powerful innovation movement has significant effects on the economic and social organization and its dynamics. The challenges in these different areas, as well as organizational reforms and emerging social forms, will be analyzed in the sixth and final chapter.

In order to understand and forecast, it is important to answer the ultimate question that this analysis raises, that of the nature of the last technological transformation. Is the latter only a new development, be it exceptionally powerful and transformative, within the continuity of the third technological system? Or are we in the presence of a new technological revolution, which would lead society into a new technological system [SCH 17]? These are questions that we will deal with in the conclusion.

1

How Can a Technological System be Understood and Analyzed?

1.1. Introduction

Understanding the contemporary technological system does not simply involve a factual description of technologies, technical objects, products and services, but an understanding of this aggregate as an organized system. The technological approach as a system is built on the principle that the technological universe, this portion of human activity consisting of the appropriation of the laws of nature to transform nature and society, can be analyzed as an aggregate of specific laws of composition and evolution, forming an order and an organization, and further generating momentum and dynamics. This form has existed in the entire history of human technology, which allows it to be exposed as a succession of technological macrosystems, having their specific characteristics and specific evolutionary laws for a given historical period. The purpose of this chapter is to show what the foundations and the characteristics of an in system approach are and how it has made it possible to explain, in an orderly manner, the succession of historic technological systems up to the contemporary system. We will then focus the presentation on the technological dynamic and on the instruments used for the analysis of the movement of the technological system, i.e. the innovation momentum.

The concept of a technological system thus appears as an operative concept, which is useful for interpreting the contemporary technological movement in its entirety. Such an approach will provide us with the tools to understand the structure of our technological universe and the technological evolution that we are currently experiencing.

1.2. The construction of technology analysis models in systems

Physical objects and activities in which technology specifically crystallizes, namely material objects such as tools, machinery, diverse consumer objects and intangible objects such as expertise and technical language are not elements isolated from one another. They form an order, within the different meanings of this word; they are inter-related and united, forming a system. This system, even though it maintains strong relationships with other spheres of social system, possesses autonomy, by means of the specificity of its composition and evolutionary laws [GIL 78]. Technology generates, due to this autonomy, dynamics of motion and change, the main component of technological innovation is driven by the permanent recomposition of technical and technological systems.

1.2.1. The ontological approach of the technological system, a vision of structure

The theory of technological systems is based on the idea that technology, at any level whatsoever, is organized into structured aggregates whose elements are interconnected and interactive. The founding proposal is thus expressed by Bertrand Gille: It amounts to also state that, ultimately as a very general rule, all techniques are, to varying degrees, dependent on each other and that a certain consistency is necessarily needed between them … This aggregate of consistencies at the different levels of all structures, of all aggregates, and all constituent parts comprises what can be called a technical system [GIL 78, p. 19].

The technological system is always an ordered aggregation of interconnected and interdependent technologies, a multilevel hierarchical system. Unitary technologies are aggregated into technical sets of increasing complexity that have their functional unity and architectural order. The technological system can thus be seen as a system of systems.

It can nevertheless be observed that this system-wide organization includes two types of elements and relationships: a system of technical systems and a hierarchized organization of technological understanding, knowledge and applications.

1.2.1.1. The technological system as an organized aggregate of technical systems

A technological system can be represented as an organization of subsystems as the real operating and even physical systems, which we can call technical systems, have an organic structure with strong interactions based on real flows of matter, energy and information.

1.2.1.1.1. The structuring unit: the unitary technical principle

B. Gille, who undertook this technological separation, states that the most basic technical unit, the technical process, physically implemented in the tool, is already a combination of physical actions, at least, the mandatory energy–matter pair or rather the matter–energy–information triple.

1.2.1.1.2. The organization of technical aggregates of increasing complexity

These technical units will be integrated into technical combinations which have increasing levels of complexity, which Gille calls technical structures, technical aggregates and technical sectors.

Technical devices (which Gille [GIL 78] calls technical aggregate) are technical systems, which are combinations of several technical processes, implemented by humans and organized by specific knowledge and information systems to carry out a complex transformation operation of matter or a complex functionality. The example of production blast furnace smelting, although seemingly elementary, shows the level of complexity attained. This is a case where a technical device is located in the production, hence a factory, for example, is a technical device such as a sector.

The level of aggregation and complexity is thus variable; it is not the point here to more precisely distinguish between the different possible levels of a technical device.

Figure 1.1. An example of a technical aggregate: the blast furnace B. Gille [GIL 79]

These technical aggregates can reach the size and complexity level of technical networking macrosystems and constitute technological aggregates which are often heterogeneous in terms of the skills implemented and often based on informational networks. We will thus refer to the latter as technical systems. Electrical systems studied by Hughes [HUG 83], transport systems, in particular rail systems, and especially nowadays the world wide web are illustrations of them. They represent specific objects of study because of their relative functional unity, despite their technical heterogeneity and their very large interdependence, thus turning them into concrete coherence vectors of the technological system as a whole.

All these systems have a specific organization, an architecture (they always have an organization within the sense of systems). All these systems are finalized in the sense that they perform functions. They can be represented as systems of functions.

1.2.1.2. The macro technological system, the supreme instance of technological organization

The superior form of system, which Gille calls technical system and which we prefer to designate technological system to differentiate it from concrete technical systems, represents an abstract hierarchical organization of all systems comprising it, a system of a more general level and order, a meta-system with more abstract links and interactions. Technological macrosystems such as global, national and branch technological systems, or even that of a technological field, come under this category.

Nonetheless, moving to this level introduces a rupture which consists of the idea that all the previous levels organize real and concrete technical systems, whereas the technological macrosystem is an assembly of more abstract relationships between technological levels. The purpose of the technological macrosystem is to formalize the entire structure of technologies and their relationships at the level of a given society and to build historical periodizations [GRA 97].

1.2.1.2.1. An informational and cognitive hierarchical organization

Not all technologies have the same significance with respect to the influence that they exert on the aggregate system. This makes it possible to bring forward the idea of a hierarchy between technological levels in the system, according to their impact on the coherence of the whole.

Today, it is established that this hierarchy ought to be addressed in the form of a conceptual distinction between three major types of technologies: generic technologies, application technologies and products, and end usage technologies.

Generic technologies are the technologies that implement a great transformation mode of matter. They are materialized in the form of scientific concepts and principles or those related to science. Their unity is based on the main process implemented, the material transformed or the general function taken into account, they are not specific to a particular product–market line. Generic technologies can be classified as, for example: electronic information processing technology, hydrocarbon chemistry and fermentation engineering. They assume a concrete existence by means of large sets of technical processes unified under a single concept (this categorization has a closeness with the notion of technological paradigm [DOS 82]).

As a result, generic technologies have, due to their higher degree of generality, a wider network of interrelations and therefore a more massive influence over the aggregate system.

1.2.1.2.2. Representation of technological hierarchy in the contemporary technological system

Application technologies: these generic technologies radiate and are broken down into groups of particular technological applications, in the form of processes and transformation mechanisms that will combine into industrial applications of technical systems and products, to the point of fine adaptation to a product–market couple. This then corresponds to the third type of technology which is located a long way downstream from the system and is responsible for solving more focused application problems.

1.2.1.2.3. Technical system – technological macrosystem: a conceptual continuum

Despite the difference in perspective of the analysis expressed above, all of the division or aggregation levels that we have described are governed by a principle of continuity. Fundamental invariants of composition and motion of artifacts (interdependence, coherence, self-saturated growth, etc.) are the same, regardless of the level of scale and aggregation. It is certainly necessary to produce the composition laws specific to each scaling level but in the context of the general invariants of this type of system.

Here, we come across one of the foundations of technological systems, that of the additivity of systems or their fractal composition.

1.2.2. Interdependence and technological coherence: the systemic principle of dynamics of technological systems

Furthermore, the network of interdependencies that merges and operates technical and technological systems generates a plurality of interdependencies [GIL 78, ROS 82].

1.2.2.1. Quantitative and qualitative interdependencies

Interdependency can be broken down; it is both quantitative and qualitative and may represent a combination of the following two links:

– Link between qualities: the work of a given material requires tools of a given quality. For instance, underwater work in deep waters, in order to achieve the necessary communication between the surface and the divers, requires control of the respiratory physiology and gas mixtures in addition to the application of a signal processing technique capable