Social Networks In The History Of Innovation And Invention

This book integrates history of science and technology with modern social network theory. Using examples from the history of machines, as well as case studies from wireless, radio and chaos theory, the author challenges the genius model of invention. Network analysis concepts are presented to demonstrate the societal nature of invention in areas such as steam power, internal combustion engines, early aviation, air conditioning and more. Using modern measures of network theory, the author demonstrates that the social networks of invention from the 19th and early 20th centuries have similar characteristics to modern 21st C networks such as the World Wide Web. The book provides evidence that exponential growth in technical innovation is linked to the growth of historical innovation networks.

What does it take for a society to be able to innovate? The question is crucial today when an increasing share of world patents are taken out by countries such as Japan, South Korea and China, which have limited energy resources and cultures very different from those in the West. However, most previous studies of the beginnings of industrialization have focused on the resources and institutions of Britain alone. As a result, they have missed the lessons to be learned from casting the net more widely so as to examine all regions of the North-Atlantic community. This book pinpoints the surprising differences between innovating and non-innovating regions. Protection of property rights, a practical ideology and abundant resources were not sufficient to spark accelerated innovation. The key to the Industrial Revolution, this study shows through case studies and rigorous verification, was the effect of expanding social networks on people’s willingness to cooperate. Language standardization permitted the widening of circles of cooperation to encompass individuals with increasingly different sets of knowledge. The result was an unprecedented burst of what some linguists have called “double-scope blending” – the integration of hitherto unrelated concepts to create something new. These findings have important implications for corporate and government policy.

Innovations are adopted when users integrate them in meaningful ways into existing social practices. Histories of major technological innovations show that often the creative initiative of users and user communities becomes the determining factor in the evolution of particular innovations. The evolutionary routes of the telephone, the Internet, the World Wide Web, email, and the Linux operating system all took their developers by surprise. Articulation of these technologies as meaningful products and systems was made possible by innovative users and unintended resources. Iterative and interactive models have replaced the traditional linear model of innovation during the last decade. Yet, heroic innovators and entrepreneurs, unambiguous functionality of products, and a focus on the up-stream aspects of innovation still underlie much discussion on innovation, intellectual property rights, technology policy, and product development. Coherent conceptual, theoretical and practical conclusions from research on knowledge creation, theory of learning, history of technology, and the social basis of innovative change have rarely been made. This book argues that innovation is about creating meaning; that it is inherently social; and is grounded in existing social practices. To understand the social basis of innovation and technology development we have to move beyond the traditional product-centric view on innovations. Integrating concepts from several disciplinary perspectives and detailed analyses of the evolution of Internet-related innovations, including packet-switched computer networks, World Wide Web, and the Linux open source operating system, the book develops foundations for a new theoretical and practical understanding of innovation. For example, it shows that innovative development can occur in two qualitatively different ways, one based on evolving specialization and the other based on recombination of existing socially produced resources. The expanding communication and collaboration networks have increased the importance of the recombinatory mode making mobility of resources, sociotechnical translation mechanisms, and meaning creation in communities of practice increasingly important for innovation research and product development.

This book contains the proceedings of HMM2012, the 4th International Symposium on Historical Developments in the field of Mechanism and Machine Science (MMS). These proceedings cover recent research concerning all aspects of the development of MMS from antiquity until the present and its historiography: machines, mechanisms, kinematics, dynamics, concepts and theories, design methods, collections of methods, collections of models, institutions and biographies.

From the formation of the Universe to today, countless major events have changed the course of life on Earth. Aligned with the online Big History Project supported by Bill Gates, Big History puts a wide-angle lens on 13.8 billion years of remarkable history and shows you how and why we got where we are today. With stunning visual timelines and special CGI reconstructions, you can see history's greatest events. Look back to our origins in the stars, explore everything from the birth of the Sun to modern technology, and see what the future holds for humans. Weaving together multiple disciplines including physics and sociology, and with a foreword by TED speaker Professor David Christian, Big History is a truly unique look at the history of the world.

Challenging the popular myth of a present-day 'information revolution', Media Technology and Society is essential reading for anyone interested in the social impact of technological change. Winston argues that the development of new media forms, from the telegraph and the telephone to computers, satellite and virtual reality, is the product of a constant play-off between social necessity and suppression: the unwritten law by which new technologies are introduced into society only insofar as their disruptive potential is limited.

Innovation and creativity are two of the key characteristics that distinguish cultural transmission from biological transmission. This book explores a number of questions concerning the nature and timing of the origins of human creativity. What were the driving factors in the development of new technologies? What caused the stasis in stone tool technological innovation in the Early Pleistocene? Were there specific regions and episodes of enhanced technological development, or did it occur at a steady pace where ancestral humans lived? The authors are archaeologists who address these questions, armed with data from ancient artefacts such as shell beads used as jewelry, primitive musical instruments, and sophisticated techniques required to fashion certain kinds of stone into tools. Providing ‘state of art’ discussions that step back from the usual archaeological publications that focus mainly on individual site discoveries, this book presents the full picture on how and why creativity in Middle to Late Pleistocene archeology/anthropology evolved. Gives a full, original and multidisciplinary perspective on how and why creativity evolved in the Middle to Late Pleistocene Enhances our understanding of the big leaps forward in creativity at certain times Assesses the intellectual creativity of Homo erectus, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens via their artefacts

Social Networks have become part of life in the 21st Century. This book looks at the growth of social networks and the role innovation has played in their development.

Ships have histories that are interwoven with the human fabric of the maritime world. In the long nineteenth century these histories revolved around the re-invention of these once familiar objects in a period in which Britain became a major maritime power. This multi-disciplinary volume deploys different historical, geographical, cultural and literary perspectives to examine this transformation and to offer a series of interconnected considerations of maritime technology and culture in a period of significant and lasting change. Its ten authors reveal the processes involved through the eyes and hands of a range of actors, including naval architects, dockyard workers, commercial shipowners and Navy officers. By locating the ship's re-invention within the contexts of builders, owners and users, they illustrate the ways in which material elements, as well as scientific, artisan and seafaring ideas and practices, were bound together in the construction of ships' complex identities.

Digitization and Web 2.0 have brought about continuous change from traditional media management to new strategic, operative and normative management options. Social media management is on the agenda of every media company, and requires a new set of specialized expertise on digital products and communication. At the same time, social media has become a vibrant field of research for media economists and media management researchers. In this handbook, international experts present a comprehensive account of the latest developments in social media research and management, consistently linking classical media management with social media. The articles discuss new theoretical approaches as well as empirical findings and applications, yielding an interesting overview of interdisciplinary and international approaches. The book’s main sections address forms and content of social media; impact and users; management with social media; and a new value chain with social media. The book will serve as a valuable reference work for researchers, students and professionals working in media and public relations.