“More than anything else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being,” says W. Brian Arthur. Yet despite technology’s irrefutable importance in our daily lives, until now its major questions have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Does technology, like biological life, evolve? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur answers these questions and more, setting forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology’s origins and evolution. Achieving for the development of technology what Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress, Arthur explains how transformative new technologies arise and how innovation really works. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives. The Nature of Technology is a classic for our times.

The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves

Business & Money

Arthur, W. Brian

Industries

Penguin

Surveying the impact of population growth where it is believed to matter most--the rural areas of developing countries--this volume explicates its effects on food production. It examines such factors as forecasts of global food output, technological progress in agriculture, choice of agricultural systems, and population growth and access to land.

Population, Food and Rural Development (International Studies in Demography)

Lee, Ronald D.

Rodgers, Gerry

Srinivasan, T.N.

Kelley, Allen C.

Economics

Oxford University Press

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Economics is changing. In the last few years it has generated a number of new approaches. One of the most promising - complexity economics - was pioneered in the 1980s and 1990s by a small team at the Santa Fe Institute. Economist and complexity theorist W. Brian Arthur led that team, and in this book he collects many of his articles on this new approach. The traditional framework sees behavior in the economy as in an equilibrium steady state. People in the economy face well-defined problems and use perfect deductive reasoning to base their actions on. The complexity framework, by contrast, sees the economy as always in process, always changing. People try to make sense of the situations they face using whatever reasoning they have at hand, and together create outcomes they must individually react to anew. The resulting economy is not a well-ordered machine, but a complex evolving system that is imperfect, perpetually constructing itself anew, and brimming with vitality. The new vision complements and widens the standard one, and it helps answer many questions: Why does the stock market show moods and a psychology? Why do high-tech markets tend to lock in to the dominance of one or two very large players? How do economies form, and how do they continually alter in structure over time? The papers collected here were among the first to use evolutionary computation, agent-based modeling, and cognitive psychology. They cover topics as disparate as how markets form out of beliefs; how technology evolves over the long span of time; why systems and bureaucracies get more complicated as they evolve; and how financial crises can be foreseen and prevented in the future.

Complexity and the Economy

A new view of the economy as an evolving, complex system has been pioneered at the Santa Fe Institute over the last ten years. This volume is a collection of articles that shape and define this view—a view of the economy as emerging from the interactions of individual agents whose behavior constantly evolves, whose strategies and actions are always adapting.The traditional framework in economics portrays economic activity within an equilibrium steady state. The interacting agents in the economy are typically homogenous, solve well-defined problems using perfect rationality, and act within given legal and social structures. The complexity approach, by contrast, sees economic activity as continually changing—continually in process . the interacting agents are typically heterogeneous, they must cognitively interpret the problems they face, and together they create the structures—markets, legal and social institutions, price patterns, expectations—to which they individually react. Such structures may never settle down. Agents may forever adapt and explore and evolve their behavior within structures that continually emerge and change and disappear—structures these behaviors co-create. This complexity approach does not replace the equilibrium one—it complements it.The papers collected here originated at a recent conference at the Santa Fe Institute, which was called to follow up the well-known 1987 conference organized by Philip Anderson, Kenneth Arrow, and David Pines. They survey the new study of complexity and the economy. They apply this approach to real economic problems and they show the extent to which the initial vision of the 1987 conference has come to fruition. The Economy as an Evolving Complex System II will fascinate economists of all types.

The Economy As A Complex Evolving System Ii (SANTA FE INSTITUTE STUDIES IN THE SCIENCES OF COMPLEXITY LECTURE NOTES)

Science & Math

CRC-Press

The Economy As An Evolving Complex System II (Santa Fe Institute)

Durlauf, Steven N.

Lane, David

Pioneering work on an important new approach to economics.

Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Economics, Cognition, And Society)

University of Michigan Press

Pioneering work on an important new approach to economics.

Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Economics, Cognition, and Society Series)

Univ of Michigan Pr

Leading scientific theorist W. Brian Arthur puts forth the first complete theory of the origins and evolution of technology, in a major work that achieves for the invention of new technologies what Darwin’s theory achieved for the emergence of new species. Brian Arthur is a pioneer of complexity theory and the discoverer of the highly influential "theory of increasing returns," which took Silicon Valley by storm, famously explaining why some high-tech companies achieve breakaway success. Now, in this long-awaited and ground-breaking book, he solves the great outstanding puzzle of technology—where do transformative new technologies come from?—putting forth the first full theory of how new technologies emerge and offering a definitive answer to the mystery of why some cultures—Silicon Valley, Cambridge, England in the 1920s—are so extraordinarily inventive. He has discovered that rather than springing from insight moments of individual genius, new technologies arise in a process akin to evolution. Technology evolves by creating itself out of itself, much as a coral reef builds itself from activities of small organisms. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from the most ancient to cutting-edge inventions of today, Arthur takes readers on a delightful intellectual journey, bringing to life the wonders of this process of technological evolution. The Nature of Technology is the work of one of our greatest thinkers at the top of his game, composing a classic for our times that is sure to generate wide acclaim.

Free Press

“More than anything else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being,” says W. Brian Arthur. Yet despite technology’s irrefutable importance in our daily lives, until now its major questions have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Does technology, like biological life, evolve? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur answers these questions and more, setting forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology’s origins and evolution. Achieving for the development of technology what Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress, Arthur explains how transformative new technologies arise and how innovation really works. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives. The Nature of Technology is a classic for our times.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Arthur, W. Brian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Arthur, W. Brian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Arthur, W. Brian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves

Population, Food and Rural Development (International Studies in Demography)

Population, Food and Rural Development (International Studies in Demography)

Complexity and the Economy

The Economy As A Complex Evolving System Ii (SANTA FE INSTITUTE STUDIES IN THE SCIENCES OF COMPLEXITY LECTURE NOTES)

The Economy As An Evolving Complex System II (Santa Fe Institute)

Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Economics, Cognition, And Society)

Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Economics, Cognition, and Society Series)

The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves

The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves