industry – Technology Liberation Front

Remembering the ‘Japan Inc.’ Industrial Policy Scare of the 1980s & 1990s

Adam Thierer — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 16:12:22 +0000

Discourse magazine has just published my latest essay, “‘Japan Inc.’ and Other Tales of Industrial Policy Apocalypse.” It is a short history of the hysteria surrounding the growth of Japan in the 1980s and early 1990s and its various industrial policy efforts. I begin by noting that, “American pundits and policymakers are today raising a litany of complaints about Chinese industrial policies, trade practices, industrial espionage and military expansion. Some of these concerns have merit. In each case, however, it is easy to find identical fears that were raised about Japan a generation ago.” I then walk through many of the leading books, opeds, movies, and other things from that past era to show how that was the case.

“Hysteria” is not too strong a word to use in this case. Many pundits and politicians were panicking about the rise of Japan economically and more specifically about the way Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) was formulating industrial policy schemes for industrial sectors in which they hoped to make advances. This resulted in veritable “MITI mania” here in America. “U.S. officials and market analysts came to view MITI with a combination of reverence and revulsion, believing that it had concocted an industrial policy cocktail that was fueling Japan’s success at the expense of American companies and interests,” I note. Countless books and essays were being published with breathless titles and predictions. I go through dozens of them in my essay. Meanwhile, the debate in policy circles and Capitol Hill even took on an ugly racial tinge, with some lawmakers calling the the Japanese “leeches.” and suggesting the U.S. should have dropped more atomic bombs on Japan during World War II. At one point, several members of Congress gathered on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol in 1987 to smash Japanese electronics with sledgehammers.

All this hysteria about Japan and MITI bore little semblance to reality. In fact, as I note in the essay, the MITI industrial planning model fell apart after it made a host of horrible bad bets and the stock market tanked in the late 1980s. Corruption also became a huge problem within many state-led efforts. A 2000 report by the Policy Research Institute within Japan’s Ministry of Finance concluded that “the Japanese model was not the source of Japanese competitiveness but the cause of our failure.” MITI was renamed the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry at about the same time, and its mission shifted more toward market-oriented reforms.

Industrial policy came to be viewed as a bit of a joke in America after that, but now it is back with a vengeance, thanks largely to the rise of Chinese economic power. Thus, because “we hear echoes from the Japan Inc. era debates in today’s policy discussions about China and industrial policy planning,” I end my essay with some lessons from the ‘Japan Inc.’ era for today’s industrial policy debates:

This similarity demonstrates the first lesson we can learn from the previous era: It is important to separate serious geopolitical and economic analysis from breathless fear-mongering and borderline xenophobia. The former has a serious place in policy discussions; the latter needs to be called out and shunned. After all, there are many legitimate worries about rising Chinese power, particularly when it involves Chinese Communist Party efforts to squash human rights domestically or to engage in industrial espionage, trade mercantilism and military adventurism abroad. Separating serious matters from trivial or imaginary ones is crucial, especially to help keep peace between nations. Avoiding hysteria is especially pertinent today with a wave of anti-Asian sentiment and attacks on the rise in the U.S. A second lesson from the Japan Inc. experience relates to today’s renewed interest in industrial policy: Forecasting the future of nations and economies—and trying to plan for it—is a tricky business. A huge range of variables affects global competitiveness and technological advancement. A nonexhaustive list of some of the most important factors would include legal and political stability, physical and intellectual property rights, tax burdens, competition policy, trade and investment laws, monetary policy, research and development efforts, and even demographic factors and access to certain natural resources. Understanding how these and other factors all work together is an inexact science. When targeted industrial policy mechanisms are added to the mix, it becomes even harder to untangle which variables are making the most difference. Both in the past and today, a less visible group of scholars has suggested that an embrace of entrepreneurialism and free trade was the fundamental factor driving Japanese economic expansion in the past and China’s amazing growth today. Openness to markets, they say, drove the enormous economic expansions—which also happened during times of much-needed catch-up modernization in both countries. But these perspectives have usually been shouted out of the room by louder voices, who either bombastically blast or praise industrial policy mechanisms as the prime mover in the economic rejuvenation of both nations. We need to tamp down on the magical thinking that governments can easily achieve technological innovation and economic growth by simply spinning a few industrial policy gauges. A few big bets may pay off, but that doesn’t justify governments engaging in casino economics regularly. History more often shows that grandiose industrial policy schemes simply result in cost overruns, cronyism and even corruption.

I also conclude by noting that:

Perhaps the most ironic indictment of industrial policy punditry lies in the way all the earlier books and essays about Japanese planning not only failed to forecast the many flops associated with it, but also did not foresee China as a potential future economic juggernaut. Korea, Singapore and Taiwan were mentioned as potential Asian challengers, but no one gave China much consideration. What might that tell us about the ability of experts to predict the future course of countries and economies? It is a reminder of the wisdom of another great Yogi Berra quote: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

You can read the entire piece, as well as several others listed below, over at Discourse.

Recent writing on industrial policy:

Adam Thierer & Connor Haaland, “Does the US Need a More Targeted Industrial Policy for AI & High-Tech?” Presentation for IHS Papers Workshop: Does America Need a New Industrial Policy?, forthcoming, July 23, 2021.
Adam Thierer, “‘Japan Inc.’ and Other Tales of Industrial Policy Apocalypse,” Discourse, June 28, 2021.
Adam Thierer & Connor Haaland, “Should the U.S. Copy China’s Industrial Policy?” Discourse, March 11, 2021.
Connor Haaland & Adam Thierer, “Can European-Style Industrial Policies Create Tech Supremacy?” Discourse, February 11, 2021.
Matthew D. Mitchell and Adam Thierer, “Industrial Policy is a Very Old, New Idea,” Discourse, April 6, 2021.
Adam Thierer, “On Defining ‘Industrial Policy,'” Technology Liberation Front, September 3, 2020.
“Skeptical Takes on Expansive Industrial Policy Efforts,” Technology Liberation Front, ongoing series.

Skeptical Takes on Expansive Industrial Policy Efforts

Adam Thierer — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 17:09:11 +0000

[Last updated 3/25/22]

Industrial Policy is a red-hot topic once again with many policymakers and pundits of different ideological leanings lining up to support ambitious new state planning for various sectors — especially 5G, artificial intelligence, and semiconductors. A remarkably bipartisan array of people and organizations are advocating for government to flex its muscle and begin directing more spending and decision-making in various technological areas. They all suggest some sort of big plan is needed, and it is not uncommon for these industrial policy advocates to suggest that hundreds of billions will need to be spent in pursuit of those plans.

Others disagree, however, and I’ll be using this post to catalog some of their concerns on an ongoing basis. Some of the criticisms listed here are portions of longer essays, many of which highlight other types of steps that governments can take to spur innovative activities. Industrial policy is an amorphous term with many definitions of a broad spectrum of possible proposals. Almost everyone believes in some form of industrial policy if you define the term broadly enough. But, as I argued in a September 2020 essay “On Defining ‘Industrial Policy‘,” I believe it is important to narrow the focus of the term such that we can continue to use the term in a rational way. Toward that end, I believe a proper understanding of industrial policy refers to targeted and directed efforts to plan for specific future industrial outputs and outcomes.

The collection of essays below is merely an attempt to highlight some of the general concerns about the most ambitious calls for expansive industrial policy, many of which harken back to debates I was covering in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I first started a career in policy analysis. During that time, Japan and South Korea were the primary countries of concern cited by industrial policy advocates. Today, it is China’s growing economic standing that is fueling calls for ambitious state-led targeted investments in “strategic” sectors and technologies. To a lesser extent, grandiose European industrial policy proposals are also prompting new US counter-proposals.

All this activity is what has given rise to many of the critiques listed below. If you have suggestions for other essays I might add to this list, please feel free to pass them along. FYI: There’s no particular order here.

Scott Lincicome and Huan Zhu, “Questioning Industrial Policy: Why Government Manufacturing Plans Are Ineffective and Unnecessary,” Cato Institute Working Paper, June 16, 2021.

[I]ndustrial policy – properly defined – has an extensive and underwhelming history in the United States, featuring high costs (seen and unseen), failed objectives, and political manipulation. Surely, not every U.S. industrial policy effort has ended in disaster, but facts here and abroad argue strongly against new government efforts to boost “critical” industries and workers and thereby fix alleged market failures. Such efforts warrant intense skepticism – skepticism that today is unfortunately in short supply.

Adam Thierer, “Industrial Policy as Casino Economics,” The Hill, July 12, 2021.

While some government investments will always be necessary, policymakers engaging in casino economics means bad industrial policy bets and taxpayer money squandered on risky ventures best made by private actors. We need to keep Uncle Sam’s gambling habits in check.

Adam Thierer, “Thoughts on the America COMPETES Act: The Most Corporatist & Wasteful Industrial Policy Ever,” Technology Liberation Front, January 26, 2022.

As far as industrial policy measures go, the COMPETES Act is one of the most ambitious and expensive central planning efforts in American history. It represents the triumph of top-down, corporatist, techno-mercantilist thinking over a more sensible innovation policy rooted in bottom-up competition, entrepreneurialism, private investment, and free trade.

Adam Thierer & Connor Haaland, “Does the US Need a More Targeted Industrial Policy for AI & High-Tech?” Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Special Study, November 2021.

This paper considers how both the recent history of high-tech industrial policy efforts at the national and international level—as well as some state and local economic development efforts in the United States—might better inform the wisdom of proposed efforts for AI or other high-tech sectors. That history is spotted with some limited successes alongside a long string of costly failures. We explore the reasons for those failures and recommend that the US refocus on the policy prerequisites that helped give rise to the computing and internet revolutions: a more generalized approach to economic development rooted in light-touch regulation and taxation of emerging technology.

Samuel Gregg, “Can America Build A Broad-Based Economy?” Law & Liberty, March 1, 2022

Of course, if a government decides to put enough money and resources behind a given industrial policy, it will likely produce some results. Yet the same is true of the gambler. If she stays in the casino long enough and spends enough money, she will win a few hands of cards. But the odds are that she will also lose a great deal of money, especially if she is as inept a gambler as the government is maladroit at identifying industry trends or entrepreneurial opportunities. Moreover, just as a compulsive gambler’s behavior will have numerous negative effects on her family’s well-being, so too does industrial policy risk inflicting wider damage upon a nation’s economy and political system. The harms range from gross misallocations of resources to the rampant cronyism and rent-seeking that seems inseparable from industrial policy (which, I again note, its advocates studiously avoid discussing), to name just a few.

Phil Gramm & Mike Solon, “Peace Through Strength Requires Economic Freedom,” Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2022.

The America Competes Act is the House’s effort to outdo the Chinese Communist Party’s latest five-year plan. The 2,900-page bill would make an old Soviet commissar blush. [. . . ] America’s success in the world economy has never depended on industrial policy or government subsidies. It has come from the relative absence of government planning and subsidies. This is hardly news. The U.S. government provided support for the efforts of Samuel Langley, the greatest aviation expert of the 1890s, in his effort to make America first in powered flight. His manned Aerodrome flopped into the Potomac River. It was the Wright brothers, two unsubsidized but determined bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, who flew at Kitty Hawk, N.C., and changed the world.

Scott Lincicome, “Moving Fast and Breaking Things,” Capitolism, February 2, 2022.

Adam Thierer, “The Coming Industrial Policy Hangover,” The Hill, February 16, 2022.

In the rush to pass legislation, we’ve barely heard a peep about the $250-$350 billion price tag. This follows a massive splurge of recent government borrowing, which led to the U.S. national debt hitting another lamentable new record: $30 trillion. China already owns over $1 trillion of that debt, making one wonder if we’re really countering China by adopting a massive, new and unfunded industrial policy that they will end up financing indirectly.

Podcast: “What’s Wrong with Industrial Policy,” Hold These Truths with Rep. Dan Crenshaw, February 16, 2022.

Tad DeHaven and Adam Thierer, “ The Military-Industrial Complex Offers a Cautionary Tale for Industrial Policy Planning,” Discourse, March 25, 2022.

Wayne Crews, “What To Do Instead Of The America COMPETES Act,” Forbes, February 2, 2022.

All this spending and expansion of the federal government, atop which our leaders would lay the America COMPETES Act and doubtless its own accompanying guidebook, has massive, ignored regulatory effects. Trillions in government spending (”investment”) have altered and will alter the entire trajectory and competitive environment of industries engaged in large-scale enterprises and transactions. This removes vast swaths of business activity from free competitive enterprise altogether, and creates displacements and distortions such that the restoration of free enterprise becomes a near-impossible disentanglement. The result is, after 100 years of big government and seduction of and fusion with big business, the greatest endeavors—from infrastructure to artificial intelligence, from smart cities to space—now consist of “partnerships” with governments rather than free enterprise, at scales and at costs so gigantic they can only be ignored.

Adam Thierer, “‘Japan Inc.’ and Other Tales of Industrial Policy Apocalypse,” Discourse, June 28, 2021.

Perhaps the most ironic indictment of industrial policy punditry lies in the way all the earlier books and essays about Japanese planning not only failed to forecast the many flops associated with it, but also did not foresee China as a potential future economic juggernaut. [. . .] What might that tell us about the ability of experts to predict the future course of countries and economies?

Adam Thierer, “Can Government Reproduce Silicon Valley Everywhere?” Technology Liberation Front, September 12, 2021.

government efforts to artificially try to create regional innovation hubs in a top-down, technocratic fashion will almost certainly persist. As they do, some will argue that this time will be different! Perhaps, but it is more likely that the past is prologue; these new hubs will likely cause federal politicians to jockey for position to have their regions named one of the winners and get a big cut of all the new high-tech pork being served up by Washington.

Weifeng Zhong, “Beijing Can’t Make Sense of Biden’s China Strategy. Can Biden?” Washington Examiner, July 01, 2021.

America is not China, and it would be a fatal mistake to equate competing with China with imitating what China does. Doing so would risk the advantageous U.S. position as the world’s chief innovator, whose ideas are turned into products by vibrant private sectors both domestically and internationally.

Mike Watson, “Industrial Policy in the Real World,” National Affairs, Summer 2021.

Given the nature of industrial policymaking in the United States, there’s little reason to believe future attempts at industrial planning will result in a more coherent, rational, or strategic allocation of resources than they have in the past. [. . .] In short, industrial policy in the United States cannot be steered by a small group of enlightened individuals, because a small group of enlightened individuals will never be at the helm. Indeed, in some sense, there is no single “helm” to speak of.

Samuel Gregg, “Industrial Policy Mythology Confronts Economic Reality,” Law & Liberty, September 3, 2021.

If prizes in policy debates were given out for persistence, those advocating for more widespread use of industrial policy in America would be first in line. No matter how many times it is pointed out that they don’t understand the nature and workings of comparative advantage; or avoid acknowledging how industrial policy fosters rampant cronyism and corruption; or highlight what they consider examples of countries in which industrial policy has been employed successfully (only to have it demonstrated that it didn’t quite work out the way they suggested), they don’t give up.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown, “If This Is How America COMPETES, We’re Going to Lose,” Reason, January 26, 2022.

the bill can’t simply address one main issue or a few critical needs. Instead, it tries to insert the government into every aspect of all sorts of industries and markets and pretend that bureaucrats can solve complex social and cultural issues.

Chang-Tai Hsieh, “Countering Chinese Industrial Policy Is Counterproductive,” Project Syndicate, September 15, 2021.

US political leaders have long tried to counter Chinese industrial policy. And now they seem to have decided that the best way to do that is to emulate it. But their agenda betrays a profound lack of understanding of the unique challenge posed by China’s coupling of an authoritarian political regime with a dynamic market economy.

Adam Thierer, “Industrial Policy Advocates Should Learn from Don Lavoie,” Discourse, November 5, 2021.

“In light of the inherent deficiencies of central planning,” Lavoie said, “it might be argued that the U.S. should instead try to reduce current government interference with the competitive process to the absolute minimum consistent with other political goals.” It remains wise advice for today’s policymakers.

Anne O. Krueger, “America’s Muddled Industrial Policy,” CGTN, June 25, 2021.

Governments have a poor track record of identifying “winners” – be it a company or a category of technology – whereas private companies have proved better at transforming new discoveries into new products or cost savings. That is why the U.S. state traditionally has stuck to funding basic research.

Eric Boehm, “Massive Subsidies Won’t Solve the Semiconductor Supply Chain Crisis,” Reason, January 28, 2022.

Tracy C. Miller, “The Case for Limiting Government Semiconductor Subsidies,” The Hill, June 26, 2021.

Without the subsidies, firms would be more cautious about building or expanding foundries. If long-term production capacity is truly insufficient, high prices and anticipated profits give firms the right incentives to build or expand and satisfy demand at cost-covering prices.

Scott Lincicome, “The ‘Endless Frontier’ and American Industrial Policy,” Cato Institute Blog, May 26, 2021.

U.S. industrial policy has a long history of struggling to overcome political pressures, just as public choice predicts, and the EFA is no different. None of this means that all legislating is bad, or that politicians don’t at least occasionally vote in the national interest. Instead, the public choice framework simply adds another hurdle—along with things like the “knowledge problem,” seen and unseen costs, and misaligned incentives—to designing and implementing commercial policies specifically intended to beat the admittedly messy and imperfect situation that the market generates. It’s imperative that we understand these risks before supporting policies that, while they might look good on paper, could easily morph into a counterproductive boondoggle—one we’ve seen countless times with respect to U.S. industrial policy.

Daniel W. Drezner, “Is the United States capable of industrial policy in 2021?” Washington Post, June 14, 2021.

To believe that the United States can pursue a high-caliber industrial policy, however, requires assuming a more competent state than I have seen in the past decade.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, “The Nicest Thing I Can Write About Supply Chain Policy,” The Daily Dish, June 10, 2021.

Nevertheless, the Senate just passed a provision for $50 billion to subsidize chip fabrication – something the president had requested – and the House will doubtlessly concur. That might seem like an industry victory, but wait until it realizes that the administration will assume it gives it the right to insist on union jobs, micromanage the design of chips, and dictate the pricing and distribution of the products. Good luck with that. As the definitive volume on policy analysis (Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack) put it, “He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.”

Lipton Matthews, “Industrial Policy—a.k.a. Central Planning—Won’t Make America Great,” Mises Wire, November 5, 2021.

Although industrial policy is in vogue, the evidence suggests that it is not necessary for long-term development. Moreover, despite the popularity of industrial policy in China, America remains the world’s economic power, and by following China, it may lose this vaunted position.

Richard Beason, “Japanese Industrial Policy: An Economic Assessment,” National Foundation for American Policy, November 2021.

There is no evidence to support the claim that Japanese industrial policy during the 1955-1990 period enhanced growth rates by sector, industries with economies of scale (greater efficiency when produced in increased amounts), productivity growth or “competitiveness.” The reality of the political process and government spending priorities makes it very difficult for such policies to be effective. Furthermore, even if political pressures had not intervened, it seems questionable to suggest that government policymakers would be better than actual market participants in determining the most efficient allocation of resources to produce the best economic outcomes.

Douglas Irwin, “ Memo to the Biden administration on how to rethink industrial policy,” Peterson Institute for International Economics, October 2020.

The challenge for policymakers is to identify such industries without succumbing to the notion that every industry is vital to some public objective. For example, the goal of “economic security” is so broadly defined and open-ended that virtually every domestic producer could claim the need for government support on that basis. The risk is that ill-conceived government programs will encourage corrupt behavior in which industries benefit themselves without contributing to national welfare.

Jim Pethokoukis, “Will Biden’s embrace of industrial policy pay off?” AEI Blog, January 15, 2021.

The history of such efforts in advanced capitalist economies gives ample reason for skepticism about the effectiveness of such top-down government planning, from Japanese economic stagnation to the now-mothballed Concorde supersonic jet to France’s failed attempt to create a thriving tech sector. The Internet might seem like the exception that negates the rule, but what turned out to be a successful partnership of government and entrepreneurs didn’t arise out of some master plan from Washington. And what do even the smartest plans look like when filtered through the dodgy quality of American governance? Maybe as an excuse for cronyism and protectionism.

Adam Thierer & Connor Haaland, “Should the U.S. Copy China’s Industrial Policy?” Discourse, March 11, 2021.

America needs to embrace its already vibrant venture capital market, the benefits of basic science and prize competitions, and a light-touch regulatory approach instead of gambling taxpayer dollars on grandiose industrial policy schemes that would likely become boondoggles.

Connor Haaland & Adam Thierer, “Can European-Style Industrial Policies Create Tech Supremacy?” Discourse, February 11, 2021.

Thus far, however, the Europeans don’t have much to show for their attempts to produce home-grown tech champions. Despite highly targeted and expensive efforts to foster a domestic tech base, the EU has instead generated a string of industrial policy failures that should serve as a cautionary tale for U.S. pundits and policymakers, who seem increasingly open to more government-steered innovation efforts.

Phil Levy & Christine McDaniel, “ Does the U.S. Need a Vigorous Industrial Policy?” Discourse, February 16, 2021.

we are certainly hearing new enthusiasm these days about industrial policy. It seems to have proponents or converts on both sides of the aisle. This either means that a new consensus has emerged, or it means that the term is being used so loosely that it has lost its original meaning. I’ll go with the latter; it now means different things to different people.

Wall Street Journal columnist Greg Ip discussing why “ The traditional skepticism toward industrial policy is well deserved.”

The traditional skepticism toward industrial policy is well deserved. Once Washington starts writing checks for semiconductors, other industries may get in line with the outcome determined more by political clout than economic merit. As in shipbuilding, the targeted companies may end up in perpetual need of federal protection and unable to compete internationally

David Ignatius, “The U.S. is quietly mobilizing its economy against China,” Washington Post, March 4, 2021.

The industrial policy the AI commission recommends could unlock talent and innovation. But if officials aren’t careful, government intervention could also afflict our best companies with the dead weight and dysfunction of our broken political system. We need government to spawn brainpower, not bureaucracy.

Veronique de Rugy, “Support for Industrial Policy is Growing,” AIER, January 18, 2020.

Looking at the federal government today tells me that the problems surrounding R&D programs in the past continue today, and will continue tomorrow, because they are simply a consequence of the normal functioning of government. It is hard to wish these problems away, even in the face of the private sector’s “imperfections.” Those arguing for more funding in R&D should proceed with caution.

Ben Reinhardt on concerns about The Endless Frontier Act

This bill is proposing to give money with risk-averse restrictions to a risk-averse organization (the NSF) to be dispersed among other risk-averse organizations (Universities) into a system with increasingly risk-averse incentives. Note that I’m not saying “it’s all fubar’d lets burn it to the ground!” but I am suggesting that instead of slamming on the accelerator, we should be asking “what would a tune-up and an oil change look like instead?”

Ryan Bourne, “Do Oren Cass’s Justifications for Industrial Policy Stack Up?” Cato Commentary, August 15, 2019.

Oren Cass asserts that markets cannot generally allocate resources efficiently by industry. Yet he provides no meaningful metrics to show this is the case, nor shows why his policies would deliver better outcomes. His two main claims about the benefits of a manufacturing sector — “stable employment” and “strong productivity growth” — are directly contradictory. A plethora of evidence suggests as countries’ get richer due to automation and technological improvements, they demand relatively more services, and so the industrial sector declines in employment terms.

Scott Lincicome, “ Manufactured Crisis: ‘Deindustrialization, Free Markets, and National Security,” Cato Policy Analysis No. 907, January 27, 2021.

This skepticism—mostly absent from Washington—is indeed warranted: analyses of the U.S. manufacturing sector and the relationship between trade and national security, as well as the United States’ long and checkered history of security‐related protectionism, undermine the theoretical justifications for imposing protectionism and industrial policy in the name of national defense. Instead, open trade, freer markets, and global interdependence will in almost all cases produce better outcomes in terms of national security and, most importantly, preventing wars and other forms of armed conflict.

Matthew Lau, “Trudeau government’s ‘industrial policy’ creates all the wrong incentives,” Toronto Sun, March 16, 2021.

Book Review: Calestous Juma’s “Innovation and Its Enemies”

Adam Thierer — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 15:32:42 +0000

“The quickest way to find out who your enemies are is to try doing something new.” Thus begins Innovation and Its Enemies, an ambitious new book by Calestous Juma that will go down as one of the decade’s most important works on innovation policy.

Juma, who is affiliated with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, has written a book that is rich in history and insights about the social and economic forces and factors that have, again and again, lead various groups and individuals to oppose technological change. Juma’s extensive research documents how “technological controversies often arise from tensions between the need to innovate and the pressure to maintain continuity, social order, and stability” (p. 5) and how this tension is “one of today’s biggest policy challenges.” (p. 8)

What Juma does better than any other technology policy scholar to date is that he identifies how these tensions develop out of deep-seated psychological biases that eventually come to affect attitudes about innovations among individuals, groups, corporations, and governments. “Public perceptions about the benefits and risks of new technologies cannot be fully understood without paying attention to intuitive aspects of human psychology,” he correctly observes. (p. 24)

Opposition to Change: It’s All in Your Head

Juma documents, for example, how “status quo bias,” loss aversion, and other psychological tendencies tend to encourage resistance to technological change. [Note: I discussed these and other “root-cause” explanations of opposition to technological change in Chapter 2 of my book, Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom, as well as in my 2012 law review article on “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle.”] Juma notes, for example, that “society is most likely to oppose a new technology if it perceives that the risks are likely to occur in the short run and the benefits will only accrue in the long run.” (p. 5) Moreover, “much of the concern is driven by perception of loss, not necessarily by concrete evidence of loss.” (p. 11)

Juma’s approach to innovation policy studies is strongly influenced by the path-breaking work of Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, who long ago documented how entrepreneurial activity and the “perennial gales of creative destruction” were the prime forces that spurred innovation and propelled society forward. But Schumpeter was also one of the first scholars to realize that psychological fears about such turbulent change was what ultimately lead to much of the short-term opposition to new technologies that, in due time, we eventually come to see as life-enriching or even life-essential innovations. Juma uses Schumpeter’s insight as the launching point for his exploration and he successfully verifies it using meticulously-detailed case studies.

Case Study-Driven Analysis

Short-term opposition to change is particularly acute among incumbent industries and interest groups, who often feel they have the most to lose. In this regard, Innovation and Its Enemies contains some spectacular histories of how special interests have resisted new technologies and developments throughout the centuries. Those case studies include: coffee and coffeehouses, the printing press, margarine, farm machinery, electricity, mechanical refrigeration, recorded music, transgenic crops, and genetically engineered salmon. These case studies are remarkably detailed histories that offer engaging and enlightening accounts of “the tensions between innovation and incumbency.”

My favorite case study in the book discusses how the dairy industry fought the creation and spread of margarine (excuse the pun!). I had no idea how ugly that situation got, but Juma provides all the gory details in what I consider one of the very best crony capitalist case studies ever penned.

In particular, in a subsection of that chapter entitled “The Laws against Margarine,” he provides a litany of examples of how effective the dairy industry was in convincing lawmakers to enact ridiculous anti-consumer regulations to stop margarine, even though the product offered the public a much-needed, and much more affordable, substitute for traditional butter. At one point, the daily industry successfully lobbied five states to adopt rules mandating that any imitation butter product had to be dyed pink! Other states enacted labelling laws that required butter substitutes to come in ominous-looking black packaging. Again, all this was done at the request of the incumbent dairy industry and the National Dairy Council, which would resort to almost any sort of deceptive tactic to keep a cheaper competing product out of the hands of consumers.

And so it goes in chapter after chapter of Juma’s book. The amount of detail in each of these unique case studies is absolutely stunning, but they nonetheless remain highly readable accounts of sectoral protectionism, special interest rent-seeking, and regulatory capture. In this way, Juma is plowing some familiar ground already covered by other economic historians and political scientists, such as Joel Mokyr and Mancur Olson, both of whom are mentioned in the book, as well as a long line of public choice scholars who are, somewhat surprisingly, not discussed in the text. Nonetheless, Juma’s approach is still fresh, unique, and highly informative. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many distinct and highly detailed case studies assembled in one place by a single scholar. What Juma has done here is truly impressive.

Related Innovation Policy Paradigms

Beyond Schumpeter’s clear influence, Juma’s approach to studying innovation policy also shares a great deal in common with two other unmentioned innovation policy scholars, Virginia Postrel and Robert D. Atkinson.

Postrel’s 1998 book, The Future and Its Enemies, contrasted the conflicting worldviews of “dynamism” and “stasis” and showed how the tensions between these two visions would affect the course of human affairs. She made the case for embracing dynamism — “a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition” — over the “regulated, engineered world” of the stasis mentality. Similarly, in his 2004 book, The Past and Future of America’s Economy, Atkinson documented how “American history is rife with resistance to change,” and in recounting some of the heated battles over previous technological revolutions he showed how two camps were always evident: “preservationists” and “modernizers.”

When Juma repeatedly recounts the fight between “innovation and incumbency” in his case studies, he is essentially describing the same paradigmatic divide that Postrel and Atkinson highlight in their works when they discuss “dynamist” vs. “stasis” tensions and the “modernizers” vs. “preservationists” battles that we have seen throughout history. [Note: In my 2014 essay on, “Thinking about Innovation Policy Debates: 4 Related Paradigms,” I discussed Postrel and Atkinson’s books and other approaches to understanding tech policy divisions and then related them to the paradigms I contrast in my work: the so-called “precautionary principle” vs. “permissionless Innovation” mindsets.]

Finally, Juma’s book could also be compared to another freshly released book, The Politics of Innovation, by Mark Zachary Taylor. Taylor’s book is also essential reading on this lamentable history of industrial protectionism and the resulting political opposition to change we have seen over time. [Note: Brent Skorup and provided many other high-tech cronyist case studies like these in our 2013 law review article, “A History of Cronyism and Capture in the Information Technology Sector.”]

To counter the prevalence of special interest influence and poor policymaking more generally, Juma stresses the need for evidence-based analysis and a corresponding rejection of fear-mongering and deceptive tactics by public officials and activist groups. He’s particularly concerned with “the use of demonization and false analogies to amplify the perception of risks associated with a new product.”

Accordingly, he would like to see improved educational and risk communication efforts aimed at better informing the public about risk trade-offs and the many potential future benefits of emerging technologies. “Learning how to communicate to the general public is an important aspect of reducing distrust [in new technologies],” Juma argues. (p. 312)

On the Pacing Problem

But Juma never really adequately squares that recommendation with another point he makes throughout the text about how “the pace of technological innovation is discernibly fast,” (p. 5) and how it is accelerating in an exponential fashion. “The implications of exponential growth will continue to elude political leaders if they persist in operating with linear worldviews.” (p. 14) But if it is indeed the case that things are moving that fast, then are we not potentially doomed to live in never-ending cycles of technopanics and misinformation campaigns about new technologies no matter how much education we try to do?

Regardless, Juma’s argument about the speed of modern technological change is quite valid and shared by many other scholars. He is essentially making the same case that Larry Downes did in his excellent 2009 book, The Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces That Govern Life and Business in the Digital Age. Downes argued that lawmaking in the information age is inexorably governed by the “law of disruption” or the fact that “technology changes exponentially, but social, economic, and legal systems change incrementally.” This law, Downes said, is “a simple but unavoidable principle of modern life,” and it will have profound implications for the way businesses, government, and culture evolve going forward. “As the gap between the old world and the new gets wider,” he argued, “conflicts between social, economic, political, and legal systems” will intensify and “nothing can stop the chaos that will follow.”

Again, Juma makes that same point repeatedly throughout the chapters of his book. This is also a restatement of the so-called “pacing problem,” as it is called in the field of the philosophy of technology. I discussed the pacing problem at length in my recent review of Wendell Wallach’s important new book, A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping beyond Our Control. Wallach nicely defined the pacing problem as “the gap between the introduction of a new technology and the establishment of laws, regulations, and oversight mechanisms for shaping its safe development.” “There has always been a pacing problem,” he noted but, like Juma, Wallach believes that modern technological innovation is occurring at an unprecedented pace, making it harder than ever to “govern” using traditional legal and regulatory mechanisms.

New Approaches to Technological Governance Needed

Both Wallach in A Dangerous Master and Juma in Innovation and Its Enemies struggle with how to solve this problem. Wallach advocates “soft law” mechanisms or even informal “Governance Coordinating Committees,” which would oversee the development of new technology policies and advise existing governmental institutions. Juma is somewhat ambiguous regarding potential solutions, but he does stress the general need for a flexible approach to policy, as he notes on pg. 252:

It is important to make clear distinctions between hazards and risks. It is necessary to find a legal framework for addressing hazards. But such a framework should not take the form of rigid laws whose adoption needs to be guided by evidence of harm. More flexible standards that allow continuous assessment of emerging safety issues related to a new product are another way to address hazards. This approach would allow for evidence-based regulation.

Beyond that Juma wants to see “entrepreneurialism exercised in the public arena” (p. 282) and calls for “decisive leaders to champion the application of new technologies.” (p. 283) He argues such leadership is needed to ensure that life-enriching technologies are not derailed by opponents of change.

On the other hand, Juma sees a broader role for policymakers in helping to counter some of the potential side effects associated with many emerging technologies. He highlights three primary areas of concern. First, he suggests political leaders might need to find ways “to help balance the benefits and risks of automation” due to the rapid rise of robotics and artificial intelligence. Second, he notes that synthetic biology and gene-editing will give rise to many thorny issues that require policymakers to balance “potentially extraordinary benefits and the risk of catastrophic consequences.” (p. 284) Finally, he points out that medicine and healthcare are set to be radically transformed by emerging technologies, but they are also threatened by archaic policies and practices in many countries.

In each case, Juma hopes that “decisive,” “adaptive” and “flexible” leaders will steer a sensible policy course with an eye toward limiting “the spread of political unrest and resentment toward technological innovation.” (p. 284) That’s a noble goal, but Juma remains a bit vague on the steps needed to accomplish that balancing act without tipping public policy in favor a full-blown precautionary principle-based regime for new technologies. Juma clearly wants to avoid that result, but it remains unclear how or where he would draw clear lines in the sand to prevent it from occurring while at the same time achieving “decisive leadership” aimed at balancing potential risks and benefits.

Similarly, his repeated calls in the closing chapter for “inclusive innovation” efforts and strategies sounds sensible in theory, but Juma speaks in abstract generalities about what the term means and doesn’t provide a clear vision for how that would translate into concrete actions that would not end up giving vested interests a veto over new forms of technological innovation that they disfavor.

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Generally speaking, however, Juma wants this balance struck in favor of greater openness to change and an ongoing freedom to experiment with new technological capabilities. As he notes in his concluding chapter:

The biggest risk that society faces by adopting approaches that suppress innovation is that they amplify the activities of those who want to preserve the status quo by silencing those arguing for a more open future. […] Keeping the future open and experimenting in an inclusive and transparent way is more rewarding that imposing the dictum of old patterns. (pgs. 289, 316)

In that regard, the thing I liked most about Innovation and Its Enemies is the way throughout the text that Juma stressed the symbiotic relationship between risk-taking and progress. One of the ways he does so is by kicking off every chapter with a fun quote on that theme from some notable figure. He includes gems like these:

“Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome.” – Samuel Johnson
“Only those will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot
“If you risk nothing, then you risk everything.” – Geena Davis
“Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.” – Tom Peters

Of course, I was bound to enjoy his repeated discussion of this theme because that was the central thesis of my latest book, in which I made the argument that, “if we spend all our time living in constant fear of worst-case scenarios—and premising public policy upon such fears—then many best-case scenarios will never come about.” Or more simply, as the old saying goes: “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

On Pastoral Myths

I also liked the way that Juma used his case studies to remind us how “the topics may have changed, but the tactics have not.” (p. 143) For example, much of the fear-mongering and deceptive tactics we have seen through the years are based on “pastoral ideals,” i.e., appeals to nature, farm life, old traditions, of just the proverbial “good old days,” whenever those supposedly were! “Demonizing innovation is often associated with campaigns to romanticize past products and practices,” Juma notes. “Opponents of innovation hark back to traditions as if traditions themselves were not inventions at some point in the past.” (p. 309) So very true!

That was especially the case in battles over new farming methods and technologies, when opponents of change were frequently “championing a moral cause to preserve a way of life,” as Juma discusses in several chapters. (p. 129) New products or methods of production were repeatedly but wrongly characterized as dangerous simply because they were not supposedly “natural” or “traditional” enough in character.

Of course, if all farming and other work was to remain frozen in some past “natural” state, we’d all still be hunters and gathers struggling to find the next meal to put in our bellies. Or, if we were all still on the farms of the “good old days,” then we’d still be stuck using an ox and plow in the name of preserving the “traditional” ways of doing things.

Humanity has made amazing strides—including being able to feed more people more easily and cheaply than ever before—precisely because we broke with those old, “natural” traditions. Alas, many vested interests and even quite a few academics today still employ these same pastoral appeals and myths to oppose new forms of technological change. Juma’s case studies powerfully illustrate why that dynamic continues to be a driving force in innovation policy debates and how it has delayed the diffusion of many important new goods and services throughout history. When the opponents of change rest their case on pastoral myths and nostalgic arguments about the good old days we should remind them that the good old days weren’t really that great after all.

Conclusion

In closing, Innovation and Its Enemies earns my highest recommendation. Even though 2016 is only half done as I write this, Professor Juma’s book is probably already a shoo-in as my choice for best innovation policy book of the year. And I am certain that it will also go down as one of the decade’s most important innovation policy books. Buy the book now and read every word of it. It is well worth your time.

Additional material related to Juma’s book:

Calestous Juma’s website at the Harvard Kennedy School
Official book page for Innovation and Its Enemies
Concise summary of the book from AAAS: “Why important innovations stall; understanding obstacles to change is key to future”
Steven Overly, “Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration. Here’s why we often hate new stuff,” Washington Post, July 21, 2016.
Matt Ridley’s review of the book for The Times of London.

Other Related Books

In addition to the books that I already mentioned throughout this review, readers who find Juma’s book and the issues he discusses in it of interest should also consider reading these other books on innovation policy, technological governance, and regulatory capture. Although many of them are more squarely focused on the information technology sector or other emerging technology fields, they all relate to the general subject matter and approach found throughout Juma’s book. [NOTE: Links, where provided, are to my reviews of these books.]

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, by Kevin Kelly (2016)
Innovative Governance Models for Emerging Technologies, Gary E. Marchant, Kenneth W. Abbott & Braden Allenby (eds.), (2013)
Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom ,by Rebecca MacKinnon (2012)
Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance, by Milton Mueller (2010)
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, by Tim Wu (2010)
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley (2010)
Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis (2008)
Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human, by Joel Garreau (2005)
The Creation of Media, by Paul Starr (2005)
Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet, by Debora Spar (2004)
Questioning Technology, by Andrew Feenberg (1999)
Thinking through Technology: The Path between Engineering and Philosophy, by Carl Mitcham (1994)
Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age, by Ithiel de Sola Pool (1983)

Defining “Technology”

Adam Thierer — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 13:53:07 +0000

[Last updated July 2021.]

I spend a lot of time reading books and essays about technology; more specifically, books and essays about technology history and criticism. Yet, I am often struck by how few of the authors of these works even bother defining what they mean by “technology.” I find that frustrating because, if you are going to make an attempt to either study or critique a particular technology or technological practice or development, then you probably should take the time to tell us how broadly or narrowly you are defining the term “technology” or “technological process.”

Of course, it’s not easy. “In fact, technology is a word we use all of the time, and ordinarily it seems to work well enough as a shorthand, catch-all sort of word,” notes the always-insightful Michael Sacasas in his essay “Traditions of Technological Criticism.” “That same sometimes useful quality, however, makes it inadequate and counter-productive in situations that call for more precise terminology,” he says.

Quite right, and for a more detailed and critical discussion of how earlier scholars, historians, and intellectuals have defined or thought about the term “technology,” you’ll want to check out Michael’s other recent essay, “What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Technology?” which preceded the one cited above. We don’t always agree on things — in fact, I am quite certain that most of my comparatively amateurish work must make his blood boil at times! — but you won’t find a more thoughtful technology scholar alive today than Michael Sacasas. If you’re serious about studying technology history and criticism, you should follow his blog and check out his book, The Tourist and The Pilgrim: Essays on Life and Technology in the Digital Age, which is a collection of some of his finest essays.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I figured I would create this post to list some of the more interesting definitions of “technology” that I have uncovered in my own research. I suspect I will add to it in coming months and years, so please feel free to suggest other additions since I would like this to be a useful resource to others.

I figure the easiest thing to do is to just list the definitions by author. There’s no particular order here, although that might change in the future since I could arrange this chronologically and push the inquiry all the way back to how the Greeks thought about the term (the root term “techne,” that is). But for now this collection is a bit random and incorporates mostly modern conceptions of “technology” since the term didn’t really gain traction until relatively recent times.

Also, I’ve not bothered critiquing any particular definition or conception of the term, although that may change in the future, too. (I did, however, go after a few modern tech critics briefly in my recent booklet, “Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom.” So, you might want to check that out for more on how I feel, as well as my old essays, “What Does It Mean to ‘Have a Conversation’ about a New Technology?” and, “On the Line between Technology Ethics vs. Technology Policy.”)

So, I’ll begin with two straight-forward definitions from the Merriam-Webster and Oxford dictionaries and then bring in the definitions from various historians and critics.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Technology (noun):

1) (a): the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area; (b): a capability given by the practical application of knowledge

2) a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge.

3) the specialized aspects of a particular field of endeavor.

Oxford Dictionary

Technology (noun):

1) The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry.

2) Machinery and devices developed from scientific knowledge.

3) The branch of knowledge dealing with engineering or applied sciences.

Emmanuel Mesthene

My personal favorite definition of the term comes from Emmanuel G. Mesthene’s terrific little 1970 book, Technological Change: Its Impact on Man and Society:

“we define technology as the organization of knowledge for the achievement of practical purposes.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

A very similar definition to Mesthene’s was employed by Galbraith in his 1967 book The New Industrial State:

“Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.”

Thomas P. Hughes

I have always loved the opening passage from Thomas Hughes’s 2004 book, Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture:

“Technology is messy and complex. It is difficult to define and to understand. In its variety, it is full of contradictions, laden with human folly, saved by occasional benign deeds, and rich with unintended consequences.” (p. 1) “Defining technology in its complexity,” he continued, “is as difficult as grasping the essence of politics.” (p. 2)

So true! Nonetheless, Hughes went on to offer his own definition of technology as:

“a creativity process involving human ingenuity.” (p. 3)

Interestingly, in another book, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970, he offered a somewhat different definition:

“Technology is the effort to organize the world for problem solving so that goods and services can be invented, developed, produced, and used.” (p. 6, 2004 ed., emphasis in original.)

W. Brian Arthur

In his 2009 book, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, W. Brian Arthur sketched out three conceptions of technology.

1) “The first and most basic one is a technology is a means to fulfill a human purpose. … As a means, a technology may be a method or process or device… Or it may be complicated… Or it may be material… Or it may be nonmaterial. Whichever it is, it is always a means to carry out a human purpose.” 2) “The second definition is a plural one: technology as an assemblage of practices and components.” 3) “I will also allow a third meaning. This technology as the entire collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture.” (p. 28, emphasis in original.)

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation / Richard Rhodes

In his 1999 book, Visions of Technology: A Century Of Vital Debate About Machines Systems And The Human World, Pulitizer Prize-winning historian Richard Rhodes assembled a wonderful collection of essays about technology that spanned the entire 20^th century. It’s a terrific volume to have on your bookshelf if want a quick overview of how over a hundred leading scholars, critics, historians, scientists, and authors thought about technology and technological advances.

The collection kicked off with a brief preface from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (no specific Foundation author was listed) that included one of the most succinct definitions of the term you’ll ever read:

“Technology is the application of science, engineering and industrial organization to create a human-build world.” (p. 19)

Just a few pages later, however, Rhodes notes that is probably too simplistic:

“Ask a friend today to define technology and you might hear words like ‘machines,’ ‘engineering,’ ‘science.’ Most of us aren’t even sure where science leaves off and technology begins. Neither are the experts.”

Again, so true!

Joel Mokyr

Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress(1990) by Joel Mokyr is one of the most readable and enjoyable histories of technology you’ll ever come across. I highly recommend it. [My thanks to my friend William Rinehart for bringing the book to my attention.] In Lever of Riches, Mokyr defines “technological progress” as follows:

“By technological progress I mean any change in the application of information to the production process in such a way as to increase efficiency, resulting either in the production of a given output with fewer resources (i.e., lower costs), or the production of better or new products.” (p. 6)

Edwin Mansfield

You’ll find definitions of both “technology” and “technological change” in Edwin Mansfield’s Technological Change: An Introduction to a Vital Area of Modern Economics (1968, 1971):

“Technology is society’s pool of knowledge regarding the industrial arts. It consists of knowledge used by industry regarding the principles of physical and social phenomena… knowledge regarding the application of these principles to production… and knowledge regarding the day-to-day operations of production…” “Technological change is the advance of technology, such advance often taking the form of new methods of producing existing products, new designs which enable the production of products with important new characteristics, and new techniques of organization, marketing, and management.” (p. 9-10)

Read Bain

In his December 1937 essay in Vol. 2, Issue No. 6 of the American Sociological Review, “Technology and State Government,” Read Bain said:

“technology includes all tools, machines, utensils, weapons, instruments, housing, clothing, communicating and transporting devices and the skills by which we produce and use them.” (p. 860)

[My thanks to Jasmine McNealy for bringing this one to my attention.]

David M. Kaplan

Found this one thanks to Sacasas. It’s from David M. Kaplan, Ricoeur’s Critical Theory (2003), which I have not yet had the chance to read:

“Technologies are best seen as systems that combine technique and activities with implements and artifacts, within a social context of organization in which the technologies are developed, employed, and administered. They alter patterns of human activity and institutions by making worlds that shape our culture and our environment. If technology consists of not only tools, implements, and artifacts, but also whole networks of social relations that structure, limit, and enable social life, then we can say that a circle exists between humanity and technology, each shaping and affecting the other. Technologies are fashioned to reflect and extend human interests, activities, and social arrangements, which are, in turn, conditioned, structured, and transformed by technological systems.”

I liked Michael’s comment on this beefy definition: “This definitional bloat is a symptom of the technological complexity of modern societies. It is also a consequence of our growing awareness of the significance of what we make.”

Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul, a French theologian and sociologist, penned a massive, 440-plus page work of technological criticism in 1954, La Technique ou L’enjeu du Siècle (1954), which was later translated in English as, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1964). In setting forth his critique of modern technological society, he used the term “technique” repeatedly and contrasted with “technology.” He defined technique as follows:

“The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, technology, or this or that procedure for attaining an end. In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given state of development) in every field of human activity. […] Technique is not an isolated fact in society (as the term technology would lead us to believe) but is related to every factor in the life of modern man; it affects social facts as well as all others. Thus technique itself is a sociological phenomenon…” (p. xxvi, emphasis in original.)

Bernard Stiegler

In La technique et le temps, 1: La faute d’Épiméthée, or translated, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus (1998), French philosopher Bernard Stiegler defines technology as:

“the pursuit of life by means other than life”

[I found that one here.]

Peter Thiel

In Zero to One: Notes on How to Build the Future (2014), Internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel says,

“Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology.”

Marc Andressen

Marc Andreessen is interviewed in June 2020 by Sriram Krishan in his newsletter, The Observer Effect, and asked what motivates him to support technological innovation. He closes by defining technology as follows:

“Technology is quite literally the lever for being able to take natural resources and able to make something better out of them.”

Frederick Ferré

Frederick Ferré’s Philosophy Of Technology (1988) is a wonderful introduction to the study of this subject and has become a widely assigned textbook used in many college courses. In Chapter 2, “Defining Technology,” Ferré provided a remarkably concise definition of “technologies” as:

“practical implementations of intelligence” (with the caveat that “‘Practical’ requires that they not be wholly ends in themselves; ‘implementations’ entails that a technology be somehow concretely embodied, normally in implements or artifacts, sometimes simply in social organization…”)

Importantly, Ferré arrived at this definition by carefully detailing what should and should not be considered “technological.” In an attempt to avoid excessive breadth when defining the term, Ferré made four important stipulations:

Technology is implemented, not ’empty-handed’: “[I]t would be wise to resist a definition of technology that includes empty hands as technological implements. The totally naked human body, interacting face-to-face with the environment, unmediated by any artifact, contrivance, invention, or tool, would seem to stand as a paradigm case of the non-technological.”
Technology is practical, not ‘for its own sake’: Where “the notion of the ‘practical’. . . [means] supporting such ends as survival, health, comfort, and material well-being.”
Technology is embodied, non ‘in the head’ alone: “[I]t would be wise to guard against the absorption of all methods and techniques, including wholly mental ones, into the concept of technology.” He uses the examples of natural language and mathematics.
Technology is intelligent, not ‘blind’: “[T]he concept of technology will not usefully be extended to behavior that, among humans, is merely accidental or, among other species, is entirely instinctive. . . . Put positively, it suggests our definition will need to stipulate that technology involves (i) implements used as (ii) means to practical ends that are somehow (iii) manifested in the material world as (iv) expressions of intelligence.”

John Fernald

Compared to philosophers, historians, and social critics, economists tend to define technology in a somewhat more dry fashion. (No surprise there, right?!) That being said, it is surprising how few economists bother defining the term in their articles and textbooks. But here’s a concise definition of the term that I recently heard John Fernald, an economist and Senior Research Adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, articulate at a policy conference. In an October 2014 presentation entitled, “Technology and the American Economy: Or, What’s the New Normal?,” Fernald defined technology as the:

“Ability to convert society’s resources (labor and capital) into output (goods and services that we value).”

Ian Barbour

In Chapter 1 of his 1993 book, Ethics in an Age of Technology, Ian Barbour discussed three conflicting views of technology: “Technology as Liberator,” “Technology as Threat,” and “Technology as Instrument of Power.” Before discussing each, he defined technology as follows:

“Technology may be defined as the application of organized knowledge to practical tasks by ordered systems of people and machines.” (p. 3)

He continued on to note that:

“There are several advantages to such a broad definition. ‘Organized knowledge’ allows us to include technologies based on practical experience and invention as well as those based on scientific theories. The ‘practical tasks’ can include both the production of material goods (in industry and agriculture, for instance) and the provision of services (by computers, communications media, and biotechnologies, among others). Reference to ‘ordered systems of people and machines’ directs attention to social institutions as well as to the hardware of technology. The breadth of the definition also reminds us that there are major differences among technologies.” (p. 3-4)

Robert Friedel

In his 2007 book, A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium, University of Maryland historian Robert Friedel offers a formal definition of technology to kick off the book and then ends with a less formal one:

“By technology we typically mean the knowledge and instruments that humans use to accomplish the purposes of life.” (p. 1)

He also clarifies the definition by explaining what it does not include, namely: “processes that completely mental or biological;” “knowledge of the world … that is purely in the realm of ideas and description;” and “nature.” He then closes the book by noting that:

“Technology can, indeed, be defined as a pursuit of power over nature.” (p. 543).

Again, please feel free to suggest additions to this compendium that future students and scholars might find useful. I hope that this can become a resource to them.

Additional Reading:

Frederick Ferré – Philosophy Of Technology (1988)
Carl Mitcham, “From Philosophy to Technology, ” Ch. 6 in Thinking Through Technology: The Path Between Engineering and Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 137-160.
Eric Schatzberg – “Technik Comes to America: Changing Meanings of Technology,” Technology and Culture (2006)

A Response to Leland Yee & James Steyer on What Motivated Video Game Decision

Adam Thierer — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:02:04 +0000

Yesterday’s 7-2 decision in Brown v. EMA [summaries here from me + Berin Szoka] was one of those historic First Amendment rulings that tends to bring out passions in people. You either loved it or hated it. But it’s sad to see some critics on the losing end of the case declaring that only greed could have possibly motivated the Court’s decision.

For example, California Senator Leland Yee, the author of the law that the Supreme Court struck down yesterday, obviously wasn’t happy about the outcome of the case. Neither was James Steyer, CEO of the advocacy group Common Sense Media, who has been a vociferous advocate of the California law and measures like it. What they had to say in response to the decision, however, was outlandish and juvenile. In essence, they both claimed that the Supreme Court only struck down the law to make video game developers and retailers happy.

“Unfortunately, the majority of the Supreme Court once again put the interests of corporate America before the interests of our children,” Leland Yee said in a post on his website yesterday. “As a result of their decision, Wal-Mart and the video game industry will continue to make billions of dollars at the expense of our kids’ mental health and the safety of our community. It is simply wrong that the video game industry can be allowed to put their profit margins over the rights of parents and the well-being of children.” Jim Steyer reached a similar conclusion: “Today’s decision is a disappointing one for parents, educators, and all who care about kids,” he said. “Today, the multi-billion dollar video game industry is celebrating the fact that their profits have been protected, but we will continue to fight for the best interests of kids and families.”

Mr. Yee and Mr. Steyer seem to be under the impression that the Court and supporters of its ruling in Brown cannot possibly care about children and that something sinister motivates our passion about the victory. Apparently we’re all just apparently in it to make video game industry fat cats and retailing giants happy! That’s a truly insulting position for Mr. Yee and Mr. Steyer to adopt. Perhaps it is just because they are sore about the outcome in the case that are adopting such rhetorical tactics. Regardless, I think they do themselves, their constituencies, and the public a great injustice by suggesting that only greed could possibly be motivating the outcome in this case.

Why is it so hard for Mr. Yee and Mr. Steyer to believe that many of us — like the majority writing for the Court in Brown — believe that video games represent valuable, constitutionally protected speech and that laws like those in California are an affront to First Amendment rights we cherish? What Mr. Yee and Mr. Steyer are asking us to believe is that all those average gamers and free speech advocates who lined up behind the video game industry and merchants who brought this case did so only out of a concern about the welfare of those companies. Preposterous! Anyone who knows anything about game industry politics knows that some rather serious tensions exist between gamers, game developers, and game retailers.

Incidentally, it’s particular silly for Mr. Yee to single out Wal-Mart in his comment yesterday since Wal-Mart actually goes to great lengths to keep “Mature”-rated games out of the hands of minors who might try to purchase them on their own. But I could care less about how much money Wal-Mart, any other retailer, or any video game developer makes from selling games. That’s the last thing on the mind of most First Amendment supporters when they praise this decision and it’s ridiculous that Mr. Yee and Mr. Steyer would list it as the primary motivation of the Court or supporters of the decision.

And then there’s Mr. Steyer’s comment that “today’s decision is a disappointing one for parents, educators, and all who care about kids.” Utterly insulting tripe. Millions of parents like me “care about kids” passionately and devote most of our lives to raising them properly. I understand you want to help us do that, but you are not helping when you insult the very people you say your organization exists to support.

I have repeatedly praised Common Sense Media here and elsewhere for many of the outstanding services and information they provide to parents. My wife and I regularly consult CSM’s excellent movie and video game summaries before we let our kids consume certain titles. It was also my great privilege to serve on a blue ribbon online child safety task force that CSM created and co-sponsored.

But when Mr. Steyer veers into this sort of hysterical ‘you’re-either-for-these-laws-or-you’re-against-children’ sort of lunacy, it really makes me question whether I should frequent his organization’s website anymore or have any further interaction with this group. While I appreciate CSM’s efforts to empower parents with more and better information about the content our families consume, it is insulting in the extreme for Mr. Steyer to suggest that you can’t “care about kids” and also care about the First Amendment.

Like the majority of the justices on the Court, I support limits on how our government controls speech because we live in a nation that cherishes freedom of expression and personal responsibility. We should not expect Uncle Sam to act as a national nanny and make subjective determinations about what is best for our families. As Catherine Ross, a professor at George Washington University Law School, noted in a nice Washington Post oped, “By rejecting this radical path, the justices [in Brown] protected our children by preserving our liberty.”

Quite right. I’m proud the Supreme Court sided with freedom yesterday and against the sort of nannyism from above that Mr. Steyer and Mr. Yee apparently favor and equate with “caring about kids.” These men obviously don’t take First Amendment rights quite as seriously as some of the rest of us. But shame on them for claiming that just because many of us (or the Courts) do take these rights and responsibilities seriously that it somehow means we don’t care about our children or that we only believe these things in order to make corporations happy.

“PointSmart. ClickSafe.” Online Safety Task Force Report Released

Adam Thierer — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:20:36 +0000

A major new online child safety task report by the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” Blue Ribbon Working Group has just been released. First, some background. In June 2007, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the principal trade association of the cable industry in the United States, announced “Cable Puts You in Control: PointSmart. ClickSafe.” a new campaign by its members to offer parents assistance in keeping their children safe online. As part of the initiative, the NCTA hosted a major online child safety summit and also announced the formation of the “Point Smart. Click Safe. Blue Ribbon Working Group” in partnership with the Internet KeepSafe Coalition (iKeepSafe) and Common Sense Media. These three organizations, along with the cable industry’s “Cable in the Classroom” program, agreed to bring together a collection of online safety experts from many disciplines to study these issues and develop a set of “best practice” recommendations that could be implemented across the Internet industry. [Disclosure: It was my pleasure to serve as a member of this blue ribbon working group.]

Today, the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” working group produced its final report and concluded that:

Ensuring children’s online safety is a difficult and complex task that calls for input from and action by a wide variety of stakeholders. There is no “silver bullet”—no single technology or approach that has proved effective. Rather, what is required is:

A combination of different technologies,

Continuing digital literacy education for parents, educators, and children, and

Active participation by all concerned companies, groups and individuals.

Similarly, a singular focus on safety is insufficient. Children must learn to minimize risks but also learn appropriate and ethical behaviors in this digital world. In addition, they need an understanding of media literacy, in order to be able to think critically about the content they consume and increasingly create. Therefore, best practices must be part of a larger effort to provide an entertaining, educational, and safe experience for children.

Compared to previous online child safety task forces, which I will discuss in a subsequent post, the major contribution of this task force was its focus on detailed industry best practices that various online providers could adopt to help parents, policymakers, and law enforcement better keep kids safe online. As the working group’s final report noted:

It should be easy for parents and others to find clear and simple explanations of what information and safety elements exist, how they function, and what a user can do in various circumstances. Therefore, best operating practices should:

Use clear and common language,

Be consistent and transparent, and

Provide information and tools that can vary by age and stage of the user.

These best operating practices should be crafted so that they can be:

Modified for a specific service or application (e.g. ISP, blog, chat, social network),

Scaled based on the number of intended or actual users,

Designed and created as part of the product development cycle, and

Continuously updated to reflect growth and change in the application or service.

The task force then provided a detailed outline of the many tools and strategies that industries could use to accomplish these goals. I encourage you to check out the “Recommendations for Best Practices” section of the report for more detail since there are far too numerous to itemize here.

As I will point out in a related post later, the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” working group’s findings and recommendation were very much in line with what 4 previous online safety task forces have concluded. Again, more on that later. For now, read this report!

Update: Here’s a few links to what others are saying about the report:

Book Review: Planet Google by Randall Stross

Adam Thierer — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:26:05 +0000

I finally got around to reading Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know, by Randall Stross. It’s very well done. Stross is a frequently contributor to the New York Times and the author of several other interesting books on the technology industry. He knows how to weave a story together, and it helps that Google’s story is a pretty amazing one.

Each chapter discusses a different part of Google’s growing family of services — GMail, Google Maps, Google Earth, Book Search, and YouTube. Of course, it all started with search and Stross does a good job explaining how the ingenious Google search algorithm has grown from dorm room project to the greatest aggregator of human knowledge that the world has ever known. This, in turn, has powered Google’s hugely successful online advertising system. The real secret of their success with online advertising, Stross argues, is that “Google’s impersonal, mathematical approach search also provides you with the ability to serve advertisements that are tailored to a search, rather than to the person submitting the search request, whose identity would have to be known.”

Despite the benefits of such generally anonymous searching, as Google has grown and added new services and capabilities, concerns about the sheer volume of data that the company collects have led to heightened privacy concerns. Indeed, privacy is a core theme that Stross uses in the book to tie many of the chapters and issues together. Google is constantly struggling to strike the right balance between providing more access to the world’s information while also being careful not to raise privacy concerns. But it’s unclear exactly how much more information collection that users (or public officials) will tolerate before advocating stricter limits on Google’s reach. As Stross points out:

Guided by its founding mission, to organize all the world’s information, Google has created storage capacity that allows it to gain control of what its users are you doing in a comprehensive way that no other company has done, and to preserve those records indefinitely, without the need to clear out old records to make way for new ones. Moreover, Google differentiates its service by refining its own proprietary software formula to mine and massage the data, technology that it zealously protects from the sight of rivals. This sets up a conflict between Google’s wish to operate a “black box” (completely opaque to the outside) and its users’ wish for transparency.

At the very least, users would like Google to disclose what protections are in place to safeguard their privacy. It is also natural that users would be curious about the machines that hold their personal data, as well as about which employees within Google have access to that data, and about the risks that it might be leaked, stolen, or transferred, for example, to a government agency that requests it. (p. 62)

Personally, I think most of these privacy fears are overblown. The mundane, trivial aspects of our daily lives aren’t really of much interest to Google. And to the extent users are concerned about their privacy, there are plenty of ways they can take steps to better protect their personal information or web-surfing habits. Blocking ads, rejecting cookies, and using encryption are three steps that privacy-sensitive users can take to better shield the personal info or surfing habits. Finally, the concern about government access to data is best remedied by limits on what government can access in the first place. We shouldn’t be regulating Google or other companies to limit information collection based on a fear of government access; we just need to tightly limit the government’s ability to enlist private companies as agents of the state.

Still, as Stross points out, privacy concerns persist:

How can users be certain that their personal information won’t be put to uses to which an individual would never willingly consent? Privacy concerns extend across all Internet companies, but those concerns of our greatest where personal information is gathered in the largest pool. This makes the stewardship of Google’s machine a subject of public interest. Whatever is behind a door that is intentionally kept closed will appear sinister, whether deservedly so or not. For the sake of improving its public image, it’s possible that Google may relent and open its doors, at least enough to afford a peek inside. (p. 62)

I think that’s a fair point and this is something Google is really going to struggle with in coming years, especially as its search algorithm and other applications grow more powerful and comprehensive. A good example of that is already seen with Google’s amazing “Street View” technology, which provides panoramic street-level views of maps searched via Google Maps. “What neither Google nor its critics realized,” Stross says, “was that our anonymity while walking about in public space in the predigital age was protected not by law but by the crude state of technology–we felt invisible only because cameras were not in place to capture our images.” (p. 145)

As a society, we had better get used to this because Street View is just the beginning of what will eventually grow into a far more sophisticated set of technologies as geo-mapping, geo-location, and image retrieval are married to virtual reality technologies. We’re really not that far away from Star Trek “holodecks” being projected into our living rooms, and once those holodecks let us walk down any street in the world, things are going to get both really exciting and a little bit creepy at the same time. But even if Google abandoned Street View tomorrow, somebody else would pick it up and run with it. Innovation in this space cannot be frozen. (Microsoft’s recent launch of Photosynth shows us that). Google has already taken steps to protect privacy on Street View by blurring facial images and letting users flag “inappropriate or sensitive imagery for blurring or removal.” That’s about all we can ask for.

Another theme that Stross develops nicely in the book is the ongoing war between Google and Microsoft. He argues that “Google’s ascendance has been accompanied by Microsoft’s decline.” (p. 195) But that does not mean Google will be able to hold their current lead. As Stross rightly points out:

No computer company has ever been able to enjoy pre-eminence that spans two successive technological eras. IBM in the mainframe era could not head off the ascent of Digital Equipment Corporation in the minicomputer era, which, in turn, could not head off the ascent of Microsoft in the personal computer era.

And now Google has “succeeded in pushing Microsoft into a defensive crouch” and made life very difficult for that supposed “monopolist” of the PC era. As a result, some Google critics claim this latest King of the Tech Hill cannot be toppled and that Google is the new “monopoly” we need to worry about. But these fears are also overblown. Google faces threats today from many different providers and doesn’t really even have its act together in other areas. For example, Stross points out how Facebook and other social networking sites have been a real pain for Google. Facebook, in particular, is creating a massive walled garden that is largely outside Google’s search and information retrieval capabilities. “In a twinkling,” Stross argues, “Facebook became a miniature Web universe–behind a wall, inaccessible to Google.” (p. 30) Meanwhile, in recent months, Google has annouced layoffs and has scuttled a variety of programs and projects which haven’t panned out, including experiments in social networking, virtual worlds, and a Twitter competitor.

But it is tomorrow’s providers and technologies that will pose the most serious challenge to Google’s current hegemony. No one can predict what big application(s) or competitor(s) will emerge next, but it all could happen faster than you think. After all, let’s not forget that most of us hadn’t even conducted our first Google search 10 years ago, and no one considered Google a serious threat to Microsoft back in 1999. Just a decade later, Google has Microsoft wondering if they have a future at all. Things can change that rapidly in the digital world and it should make us question the wisdom of government intervention into such a fast-moving field.

Moreover, government micromanagement of the services Google provides–especially search–is troubling to imagine. I don’t even want to think about how a DOJ consent decree would seek to control Google’s algorithm or the search business in general. But some critics are already speaking of “Googleopoly” and calling for a “Federal Search Commission,” foreshadowing the fight to come. Google’s rapid growth and sheer size may end up tilting both policymakers and public opinion against them more and more in coming years as such “Googlephobia” increases. Stross notes that:

Google’s future will be determined to no small degree by the view that its users hold of the company itself. Google has enjoyed mostly favorable public notice in its first ten years, but maintaining a cuddly, anticorporate image when it stands among the U.S. companies with the largest market capitalization may pose an increasingly difficult challenge. (p. 18)

Indeed, Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto is already wearing a little thin in some quarters. And some of us still aren’t even sure what it means. As Google grows bigger and makes buckets more money in coming years–and they likely will–I think Stross is correct in arguing that Google’s honeymoon with the public and policymakers will likely come to an end. That doesn’t mean they won’t still be a great company doing great things, it’s just that they’ll be antagonizing even more competitors, lawmakers, and other groups than they already do today. And that will likely spell serious trouble for them. It’s never good to have so many enemies. Just ask Microsoft!

In the meantime, we shouldn’t lose sight of what an amazing capitalist success story Google has been and how lucky we are that they have been at least a little bit successful in their mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It’s an incredible story, and Planet Google is a fine early history of the company and the new era of computing it has ushered in.