Workshop: The Structure of Technology

Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe NM

Investigators

Abstract

This workshop will work toward an integrative framework for the interplay between science and technology on the one hand and social and economic systems on the other. As scientific discoveries are made and become embodied in new technologies, they have pervasive impacts on the architecture of technologies, as well as the organizations and economies around them. These impacts have been explored with a wide range of tools across fields. Engineering, economics, management science, science of science, and other fields have developed diverse frameworks to understand the ways in which abstract knowledge connects with implementations in real-world systems. However, the multi-disciplinary nature of these investigations, and the complexity of the interactions between science, technology, and the economy, have stymied efforts to build an integrative framework, and parallel efforts in different fields rarely cross disciplinary boundaries. Having such a framework would help understand and plan for the impacts of science and technology at all levels, whether promoting innovation in a small team of designers, or developing policies for a region to branch out into new industries. This workshop will convene scholars to take stock and develop a research agenda to better understand the structural characteristics of technology that matter for predicting societal outcomes. Soliciting input from a wide range of disciplines, as well as working towards a synthesis of their frameworks, is critical for progress as technology change necessarily involves wide-ranging interactions between scientific discovery, engineering innovation, business operations, and economics. For example, a variety of evidence shows how the characteristics of scientific knowledge and technology shape firms and local economies. Firms often structure their departments and teams in ways that mirror interactions between physical components. At the regional level, economic competitiveness depends on whether scientific and technical knowhow needed for a given technology is present in the population, highlighting the importance of strategies to gain knowhow through training or by attracting skilled individuals. The changing characteristics of technology also matter for efforts to adapt the workforce. As technologies increasingly leverage robotics or artificial intelligence to automate manual and routine tasks, they have placed new emphasis on worker’s cognitive and empathic abilities, portending new training needs for the workplace. The workshop will gather a set of researchers with diverse expertise under the umbrella of science of science to develop quantitative ways to model the structure of technologies, involving embedded relationships among design components, ideas, skills, economic inputs, and individuals. One outcome of the workshop will be a research agenda to advance a scientific understanding of science and technology change, and help a wide range of efforts to predict, guide, and manage its impacts. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.