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Technical Change and Human Skill:
Art Lost in a Sea of Science by
Michael Fores
August 1979
This paper is circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment Its contents are preliminary and should, therefore, not be quoted without permission.
Section
Section
Section
Section
Section
A page 1
Introduction
B page 8
In Search of Technology
C page 27
Technology Transfer and the Innovation Aberration
D page 46
Innovation and the Riven Unit
E page 60
Skill Learning and Slackening-Off
Section F
A Recommendation for BRD page 72
modern technology has actually led to a reduction of perfor
mance. The steps in this process were:
1) A misguided concept of technology in the English language, which has informed public policy in many countries;
2) The misconception of technology transfer, emphasizing the transfer of formal knowledge;
3) The interpretation of technical change and innovation as primarily due to scientific advance and happening in dra
matic leaps;
4) The neglect of skills, the concomitant stress on knowledge, and the resulting discouragement of technical tinkering which is basic to any improvement.
Alternative views are proposed as a basis for measures to strengthen technical change, increase welfare, and keep man
power in sensible employment.
Zusammenfassung
Bestrebungen, die wirtschaftliche Leistungsfähigkeit auf der Grundlage einer modernen Technologie zu stärken, haben faktisch
zu einer verringerten Leistungsfähigkeit geführt. Die Einzel
schritte in diesem Prozeß waren:
1) Eine irrige Auffassung von "Technologie" auf Englisch, auf der die staatliche Politik in vielen Ländern aufgebaut wurde;
2) Die Fehldeutung des Technologietransfers mit der Betonung der Übertragung formalen Wissens;
3) Die Auffassung, technischer Wandel und Innovation seien vor allem wissenschaftlichem Fortschritt zuzuschreiben und ge
schähen in dramatischen Sprüngen;
4) Die Vernachlässigung der Geschicklichkeit, die entsprechende Betonung von Wissen, und die sich hieraus ergebende Ent
mutigung technischen Basteins als Grundlage jeder Verbesserung Als Basis für Maßnahmen zur Stärkung technischen Wandels, zur Er
höhung des Wohlstandes und der Beschäftigung an sinnvollen Ar
beitsplätzen werden anders geartete Auffassungen vorgeschlagen.
operation of the technical functions is a key element in the general performance of nations. In its guise as technical change, perhaps it is even the key element acting on econo
mic growth (1 , pp 4-5; 2 , p 147). At any rate, technical features of the production process in manufacturing, and technical features elsewhere, are more readily changed, in most instances, than other features; it is normally less disruptive in a work-place to make the machines run more efficiently, than to change the payments system, or to alter the timing of coffee-breaks. Matters to,do with Technik, then, are distinctive for being operable in practice. Yet, despite this, Sahal, who has recently locked at the econo
mist's state of theory of technical change is surely right to share a.lament about the current state of the art with a number of others ( 3, p 2);
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the problem of tech
nological change has turned out to be the most vexing and elusive of all problems in the theory of economic growth. It is like Shakespeare's Kate, hard to live with - and without.
Kate, it will be remembered, was the feckless shrew whom Cole Porter took out from the cob-webs of classical drama to produce his best musical,"Kiss me Kate". Kate, the shrew, was distinctive for being ill-tempered, domineering, loud
mouthed and thoroughly objectionable. Most of her suitors were afraid of her as soon as they saw her.
It will be remembered, too, that, in the folk-memory of most groups, even the flightiest of women - like Shakespeare's Kate - are often acting thus to draw attention to themselves;
to what they really are, to what they are really up to, and to what they would be like to be. Shakespeare's - and Por
ter's - successful suitor from Verona tamed the lady in question by getting close enough to treat her rough, and to
get to know her properly. At least when she was beaten pro
minently in the local square, someone was taking some notice of her.
This paper presents some evidence to support the conclusion that much of the specialist economics of "innovation"and tech nical change is so shot through with elementary errors of observation and classification, and with a general slackness of analysis, that it is close to being worthless. Prominent English-speaking natural scientists have contributed to the general mystery, too, about what goes on in area which is best thought of Technik, but which they have usually colo
nized, made "respectable" and rendered "science-like" as an "-ology" ( 4; 5 , p 6). Whereas the sociologists who have dealt with the subject (normally as "technology" in English, too) have constructed a large black box of tricks whose
contents they have felt necessary to take as given, rather than being variable and operative. For all the talk and the bluster, the puckered brows and the official reports, scien
tists in general have joined ranks to talk of Kate but never to know her. It is small wonder that she continues to play up. Kate-Technology awaits her Petruchio: see page 75.
Galbraith, for instance, has made much mention of technolo
gical imperatives in his study of the "new industrial state".
But, as indicated in a companion paper, "The Myth of Techno
logy and Industrial Science" ( 6, pp 9, 20), even his defi
nition of the key idea is not discriminating and so is not a proper definition at all: needle-work, cooking, politics and detective work could all, as easily as the activity of Technik, be "the systematic application of scientific and other knowledge to practical tasks" ( 7, p 23): see also
(8 ) for a discussion of how the idea of Technik differs from that of "technology". Nelson and his co-authors, in one of the best-known studies explicitly on "technology", have so confused the issue on what they have chosen to dis
cuss ,that "technological advance" is variously a change in knowledge and a change in hardware (9 , pp 8, 19). Kennedy
and Thirlwall have, in a literature review for the Royal Economic Society, produced the same sort of black box on the spot (of much the same design as that made by the sociolog
ists ), by defining their expressed, principal topic of inter
est , "technical progress", both as "the effects of changes in technology" and as "changes in technology itself"in the same passage (1°, p 12). If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride; if ideas were useful artifacts, there would be no need for technical specialists and everyone would be rich.
Then the same authors' confusion between the typical and the dramatic in technical change has been repeated more recently by Pavitt and Walker in a literature review for an inter
national group (10, p 43; 1 1 r pp 15, 20, 21); men who bite
dogs are taken as typical of men: see also pages 13 and 35. So, thoroughly bad science (often the "observers" have forgotten what they are meant to be looking at half way through their inquiry) has been produced through a sort of hysteric's charter, whereby those who shout the loudest are heeded the most. The acknowledged expert on a certain piece of landscape is someone who has rarely been to see for himself, but who has picked up the shouting.
Amongst sociologists writing on the technical functions, the favoured idea of "technology" has often been written up as part of the "sociology of science". Concern has been ex
pressed as to whether "industrial scientists" are acting like proper scientists as "cosmopolitans" - with first loyalty to the wider body of scholars - or as "locals" - with allegiance to the workplace (12, p 93 ); but what is often missed is the point that those examined are not really scientists at all, by qualification, self-description and type of work per
formed, but rather engineers who are producing quite diffe
rent types of working product (13). There are those
"humane" scholars, too, who look at the evidence on scien
tific discovery, and follow the observation of:.Koestler (14) to believe that they then know about a process of tech
nical invention, a process which is essentially the opposite of discovery:You can only "discover" something which was
there already; you can only "invent" something which was not (15, p 435; 5 , p 8). Then, the classic studies of Woodward, on types of "technology" in the process of manufacture, are notable for their acceptance that the "technology" (what ever that is) is given (16, p 36 ); whereas any technical specialist knows that the unit which thinks in such a way is heading for commercial disaster. Almost all the qualified technical people in a manufacturing unit are in the business of producing technical change; probably about three-quarters of all employees in manufacturing concerns think of them
selves as Techniker of some type (17, p 88 ) ,' so there is a huge group of personnel aiming to render the sociologists'
assumption invalid.
Given this last point of aberration between the accounts of outside scientific commentators and events in the world which they claim to be discussing, it is worth calling in, as part of the evidence, another heroine from the world of English fiction. If "technology" (as Shakespeare's stroppy, ill-be
haved Kate) continues to play up monstrously, it is because most of the scholar-observers who have pretended to know her have never really bothered to see what she is: they have
contented themselves to talk a lot to each other of the lady, rather than study closely her special skills and capability It will be remembered, too, that when Alice discovered a new sort of world in her dreams, on one occasion she found that she had to run hard on the spot in order to stay in the same place; this was part of her encounter with the Red Queen.
The Victorian bourgeoisie contrived to get many things wrong.
They sought to build up a kind of classical, timeless age for a new gentlemanly master-race to live in - and this, despite the hectic pace of change which was taking place.
In Alice's home the classic virtues must have been
taught: the Athenian ideal, good manners, the bible, "breed
ing ". The world which Alice found in her dreams is, in fact, the real one, rather than that of her normal daytime life.
At least those who are engaged in the technical functions of this paper, and in business enterprise, have always had to
run to stay in a single place- Those who believe in the clas
sic virtues will soon become swamped.
Those scholars and scientists (economists, sociologists,
physicists and chemists amongst them) who have taken up their pens, in the last few decades, to discuss technical change (under various labels)have, indeed,been aware of something
like the Alice Effect sketched out here. The main point made in my other paper (6 ), however, is that such writings in the English language have tended to use an inappropriate model of technical change: an STH (science-technology-hard- ware) proposition, which allows the foolish "applied science"
construct to be bandied about with confidence. In the account here, subtitled "art lost in a sea of science", the conten
tion is argued out that such a tradition of scholarship, be
ing so poorly based on observation of real-world events, is recklessly self-confident in its strong normative element.
In the process of insisting that "science" is the prime cause of technical advance, scientists have taken up the
business of miracle-making; for they have been untrue to their own art as scientists; and they have neglected the prime operative variable which was always there to see if they had bothered to take a proper look: human skill and ingenuity ( 4) which is improved in a learning process (18).
Shakespeare's Kate is alive, well, ever-stroppy and still feeling neglected with justification. She is living here, there and everywhere - under the scientists' noses r in the house next door, in the plant across the park. She is part of the species homo faber, the tinkerer and improver, with ingenious, creative, constructive talents a-plenty that those who have pushed the cause of science have taken from popular view (19, p 1; 20) .
In a better-ordered world than the one in which scholars have set out aggressively to market the cause of scholarship, the two primary roles of science are to observe and to test ab
stractions noted down on paper by others. This paper is writ-
en in the same spirit as that which deals with the inappro
priate STH model of technical change, to test a number of abstractions and to observe the work of those who have
claimed to be observers of the technical functions (6, p 5).
In section B, an attempt is made to survey the literature in quest of what "technology" is meant to be, and further comment is made on what might be called the Alice effect in her encounter with the Red Queen's world, which is the real one for the technical functions. A confusion wrought (is "tech
nology” knowledge, hardware or perhaps a practice?) has led dis
cussants not to understand well the process of technical change or the role of skills in it.
In section C, an inquiry is conducted into what exactly is meant to be "transferred" in the course of the process known as
"technology transfer": confusion about "technology" has not helped here; and the idea is put forward that the technical functions are best considered for their design element. An Innovation Aberration pervades much of the literature already referred to; commentators confuse the issue by noting dramatic events and citing them as being typical.
In section D, some modes are investigated of how the scien
tist can alienate himself from the typical workplace of the Technik-faber mode. The notions of "science" as an active agent, of "technological revolution", and of "organizational"
arrangements all serve to de-skill the technical
functions in accounts which use them. As artifacts of accoun
tancy, they fail to pick up the creative, constructive thread of the main functions of manufacturing and of Technik.
In section E, the thesis of the present paper is discussed in the context of Sahal's proposition about learning (3), and the need to revive a proper consideration of personal skill in the operation of the technical process. If the technical functions are considered as part of a design process, includ
ing a proper consideration of cost, then the course of tech-
nical change can better be understood than is the case of ex
planations following the models which concentrate on "science"
and "technology". Even in the so-called "advanced technology"
sectors of manufacturing there is a close learning-change link (21).
In section F, a brief recommendation is suggested for policy purposes in Germany today, which takes account of errors ge
nerated in Britain and America that are partly due to the un
reliable nature of the literate examined here. The point is restressed, too, that any reliable account of the process of technical change - or of innovation - needs to be founded on a more secure empirical base than is the case of the discussion of "technology" of the same literature.
B . In Search of Technology
It was suggested in the introduction to this paper that the idea of "technology" is a favourite topic of discussion, in the English language, for those who are personally unfamiliar with the manufacturing process; the same point is argued at greater length elsewhere (6 , p 11). English-speaking engi
neers tend to use the word with a different meaning (roughly
"the arts of manufacturing" or "the arts of Technik") compared with that used by those for whom it is a particular favourite
( 22, p109). Scientists, of all sorts, have tried to "civi
lize" the activity of making useful, bulky artifacts by
making it sound familiar - as yet another "-ology", like the practice of the scholar next door (5, p 7). Calling a process, whose main output is not formal, written-down knowledge, by
a name which implies that it is so, is consistent with a further confusion in which invention can be confused with discovery, and classed as such. So the real technical pro
cess can be wished away in importance through an assumption, for instance, that the wheel - or the printing press, or the milling machine, or the steam engine - was not really inven
ted at all, but was instead found by some lucky person be
hind a convenient bush (5, p 10;22, p 114).
Some of this explicit treatment of "technology" is, then, at best patently absurd. It is a piece of farce, rather than a piece of scholarship, in which m a n ’s greatest attribute - his ability to be creative in the mode of homo faber - is obscured from proper view and commentary. It is part of a meta-language best thought of as Industrispeak, much used by those who rarely visit and observe closely the technical functions (6, p 11). At the worst it is reckless in its abili
ty to de-skill the human race in its accounts of what are presented as real-world events. For further discussion of
the faber mode, see the "rational fallacy" idea (19 ).
Neglecting, for the moment, the issue of what the idea of
"technology" is meant to be in the literature covered, I
will make the following assumption. If the politicians and the social and natural scientists who discuss the topic are pressed to say what they mean in terms of flesh, blood and materials, broadly speaking:
a) most "technologists" are taken to be engineers by quali fication;
b) "technology" is taken to be what those engineers (the "technologists") do at work.
In this section of the paper, titled "In Search of Technolo
gy", the aim is to indicate the necessary qualifications, and eccentricities of usage, that flow from a discussion of this type.
From the start of the search, it is worth pointing out that there are those for whom "technology" can do no good. Thus, Chomsky writes of the Vietnamese war, that: "Three times in a generation, American technology has laid waste a helpless Asian country" (23, p 7 ); here the idea is obviously bound up with the "naked" use of a type of political power with whose use the writer does not agree. Those who talk of "tech
nology despoiling the environment" are using the idea in much the same way; the useful, beneficial and "humane" side of the making and use of "machines" of all sorts is normally neglect
ed. Neglected, too, is the point well expressed by Bronowski, that man - as the only evolved creature - knows no environ
ment which is "natural" to him; while the main agent if his cultural evolution is his skill in making useful artifacts.
(24, p 141 ). Those who argue that man should revert to some more "natural" mode of life have forgotten that the despised
"technology" created every datum point which they might spe
cify for the point to which a return should be ma.de.
Then, there are those from whom "technology" is mainly to do with sophistication and technical wizardry; this is in the manner that the phrase "advanced technology" is used to signi
fy the production of artifacts like computers and Concordes.
Almost all men believe in "progress" - this could be because we know we are mortal; and most are expected to be patriotic.
So those, in the more developed areas of the world, who argue publicly that their own beloved Y-land, or Z-land, s'hould go in for "more advanced technology", construct their phrasing in the expectation of obtaining strong support for their viewpoint. "Technology", in this sense, is a piece of group- flattery. It tends to include sophisticated machinery and laboratory equipment, but not the apparently-hum-drum parts of the technical functions. It deals, as de Bono has it, with
"tangible materials especially metals and plastics. A plastic telephone is technology, a metal telephone even more so, but a highly polished metal telephone might well be something else... Technology seems to imply the use of modern materials or materials in a modern way. Metal is technology; wood is not
(25, P 1 ).
Or the idea of technology is to do with high praise and enthusiasm for modern times, in the hands of someone like Kuznets. For Galbraith, and many economists, "technology"
is something like "the systematic application of (natural) scientific and other knowledge to practical tasks" (7, p 23).
Whereas Kuznets believes that the "epochal innovation that distinguishes the modern epoch is the extended application of science to problems of economic production" (26, p 9).
Such a reading of how the seeds of a "modern" era were sown and grew fertile in one country tends to stress discontinuity:
Watt (steam engines) or Arkwright (textile machinery) may be set down as the parents of it all (27, p 7 ). And so
calmer voices (such as that of the specialist historian,
Usher ) tend not to be heeded, who argue along the lines that it is "a mistake to think of textiles as the primary focus of industrialisation of modern Britain": the course of tech
nical change is best thought of as "continuously emergent novelty" rather than to be to concerned with the "romantic concept of occasional innovation..." (28, pp 109, 113). For further comment on the particular English-British experience, see (29, pp 5 - 9).
Taking a less passionate view than most of those noted be-
fore, it is fairly easy to follow up the two points of assump
tion made earlier on; in this case, a basic peculiarity of treatment can be seen almost from the outset. "Technology"
is, as noted beforehand, part of the specific English-language debate on matters concerning manufacturing and natural science British official statistics tend to start off with a broad category "science and technology": this act of classifica
tion seems to legitimize the rather strange idea of the hybrid group QSE's , (qualified scientists and engineers), being a statistical assembly of those with quite unlike working aims. However, when these figures produced are broken down further on the manpower side, we can see:
a) The group "science" only includes those who have studied natural science? so all social scientists have the description of their trade stripped from them, as searchers after the truth-
b) The group "technology" tends to change its name to
"engineering and technology", with the discovery that well over three-quarters, and often up to.95 %, of the group are engineers by qualification; they are also engineers-most commonly by self-description, and often engineers by job-title (30, table 26).
c) Invariably there are more people in the "engineering"
group than the "science" one.
Given this, the sceptical observer can ask the following questions:
d) Why is a group which overwhelmingly consists of engineers not called "engineering", rather than
"technology"?
e) Why are engineers and physicists classed together, when their working styles, aims and locations are
so different? Engineers "invent", while scientists
"discover": see the point made at page 3 above.
f) Why is the main group of activities, if it is useful at all, not called "engineering and natural science"
(in that order) to signify better the nature of its contents, and the amount of effort spent in each area?
or, g) If a single label is needed for the whole, why are the so-called "QSE's " not all known as "engineers", given point c) - rather than "scientists" which
tends to be the English speaker's popular label in the "two cultures" context (31 )?
The most plausible answer to all these questions is that:
h) The whole endeavour of statistics-building has been a creation of those who have wanted to stress a thoroughly-unreliable "applied science" model of technical change. This is the model described else
where as the STH (science-technology-hardware) model, which holds that something called "science" is the main source of "innovation" and whose validity is denied by almost all empirical study (6, pp 11 -'14).
Further in quest of the nature of the elusive "technology", it is worth looking at three ideas which derive from an exami
nation of the work of economists:
(i) The idea of "technology" is tied in with a thoroughly unreliable treatment of "innovation", which con
fuses the dramatic with the typical: this point is dis
cussed as an"innovation aberration" in the next sec
tion of the paper, and was introduced at page 3 above.
(ii) The vagueness in the literature on the "technology"
idea is consistent with confusion and misunderstanding by its contributors about what "technologists" (en
gineers) do: "technology" is part of a metalanguage, Industrispeak, used by people who like to talk about
"industrial"work-places, but who rarely visit them to see for themselves ( 32; 33, p 50).
(iii) There has been what amounts virtually to an obsession with Research and Development (R and D) work in much of the same literature: this point is covered in the following paragraphs, and can be seen to be closely related to the "innovation aberration" already noted.
It is now worth taking a quick look at what engineers do, remembering the point made about the second lady of the in
troduction. Plenty of preliminary evidence has already been cited in support of the argument that Shakespeare’s Kate plays up because few people who talk of her have bothered to get to know her well. The contention about the world which Alice found is, it will be remembered, that the Red Queen was right: you do have to run quite hard to stay in one place in the world of homo faber and of main-line Technik.
In Alice's world, it is reasonable to assume that almost all of those who are called "technologists" in the literature, are employed to cause and fashion technical change of some sort. Such change will typically be of the improvement type of product, process, systems of manufacture or sales, which Cairncross has described as the "main-stream" of "advance"
(2 , p 157). Close observers of the technical functions will accept that most of this effort is in the tinkering, "cut- and-try" mode which Sorge and I-have argued characterizes the typical faber mode of human endeavour (19, p 1-2)» This mode of work tends to be denigrated by those who feel that technical effort should better be "science-based" in some way, or informed by scientific knowledge about what is the best course of action to take ( 6, p 8 ): it is this pecul- arity of accounting which contributes to the neglect of skills of all sorts noted at page 5 above, and dealt with more
fully in the last section of this paper.
Given this, it is surprising, to say the least, that an in
novation aberration has been allowed to appear in the litera
ture - and that politicians have been allowed be get so ob
sessed with the Research and Development (R and D) functions.
Studies show that only about 10-15 % of qualified engineers are engaged in specific R & D work (6, p 1/1). Perhaps as many as 80 %, and certainly two-thirds, of all employees in the typical manufacturing concern will be Techniker of a type - designers, production managers, development engineers, operatives, foremen and directors - people who share an aim
to survive, by the intelligent use of technical change, in the world that Alice found. In Sweden, statistics show that some two-thirds, and more, of all of those with formal quali
fications at any executive level, and who are working in ma
nufacturing units are engineers (34) • There are thirty times as many graduate engineers at work as there are graduate natural scientists - a single figure that makes the British
OSE construct (used in OECD statistics, as well): such a pe
culiar artifact of analysis: see also the points c) - h) at page 11 above.
It is surprising, too, that Nelson should have been able to state, a decade ago, in the study referred to at page
above and in an assessment that he has since partially re
tracted (35), that "Industrial R and D includes all organized efforts to advance technology conducted by business firms
that produce and sell goods and services" (9 , p 44;22, p 110) There are, of course, difficulties in interpreting this
statement, which have been sketched out before and are ex
amined more closely later - just what is it that efforts are being made to "advance"?. However, even the figures quoted already on manpower deployment, and a small account of em
pirical study of the manufacturing process, indicate the extent of error. Nelson and his colleagues have so caught the enthusiasm for "innovation" and R & D of the scholarly literature, that their error is probably of a factor of ten.
More specifically I would suggest that R & D in manufacturing units accounts to some 10 - 20 % only of the unit's efforts to achieve technical change: this is the case, whether the yardstick for assessment is cost, or the design unit intro
duced at page 30 below: see also section E.
The specific issue of trying to discern the nature of tjie entity called "technology" in the current English-language debate is the source of the title of this section of the present paper; it is the concern of the three points listed at page 12 above; it is the concern, too, which has defeated de Bono, who talked of different types of telephone in the
passage quoted at page 10 : "Technology is an impression ra
ther than a definition... The closer you get to it the more it is not there" (25,p 1 ). And the discerning reader is re
minded of Gertrude Stein's remark about a quest for the spirit of the American suburb: " When you get there, there
isn't any there there;-".
Manpower statistics show that engineers are engaged in a range of functions, all of which are centrally to do with technical change of product and process. Their major working output takes the form of hardware, and systems used to pro
duce hardware and services. Typically this working output should be thought of as a "machine", or an ingenious contri
vance: rather than a body of information and knowledge, which is the distinctive working output of the scientist. Yet
the; literature constantly stresses the knowledge-
connection of "technology" - as in Galbraith's definition noted before. Or else the same entity is defined in terms of knowledge - as is the case of Mansfield's best-known book, The Economics of Technological Change (1 ): see also p 2.
In this tradition, then, those known as "technologists"
(normally "engineers" by title) are distinctive for the fact that their major working output is not "technology",
"knowledge relative to the industrial arts" ( 1 , p 3): rather it is "machines". Philologists are well known to produce
philology; biologist produce biology; X-ologist produce X- ology; but "technologists" are the joker in the pack: see also ( C , p 1 ). It is convenient to look at Mansfield's basic system of classification of types, as an example of how economists can produce unreliable ground-rules for dealing with
technical change . On the typology of historians of "technology", see also (5; 36; 37) which focus on the "applied science" fallacy There are at least four separate places in Mansfield's book, where he defines the main topic of the book, "technology",
in terms of knowledge (my stress in each case):
a) "Technological change", being "one of the most im-
portant determinants of the shape and evolution of the American economy", is "the advance in knowledge relative to the industrial arts." ( 1, p 3)
b) "Recognising the importance of technological change, firms have increased their outlays on research and development at a rapid rate": the change is as at a) above,in the form of knowledge change ( 1, p 8 ).
c) In a discussion of the "nature, determinants, and measurement of technological change, as well as...
the behaviour of various indicies of productivity", the main topic is taken to be: "Technology... so
ciety's pool of knowledge regarding the industrial arts." ( 1, p 10)
d) In a summary passage, technology is defined as knowledge in the same way as c). But technological change -which earlier on was contrasted with "change in technique" ( 1, p 11)- is now compounded with it:
"such advance (of technology) 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 and management." ( 1, p 40)
The lawyer or the public servant who is keen to monitor a case put to him will look first at its internal consistency.
Inconsistency in facts, alleged causes of events or typology adopted is taken to be a sign that sharp practice may be pre
sent. If such a sign is apparent, the assessor will then dig more deeply into the case put forward.
Mansfield's chosen subject is "technological change". Some initial evidence is available of a total failure of the typology adopted. Mansfield is as vague about what "tech
nology" is, as Nelson is about the same thing, and Kennedy and Thirlwall are about their expressed topic of interest
"technical progress": see also pages 2-3 above. In each instance the accounting confusion, in the chosen labelling procedure, between an activity's output ( a "machine" in this
ty itself, and one of its inputs (formally-expressed know
ledge) makes the activity into a black box on the spot and tends to devalue the process of the activity.
Such a confusion about "technology” is consistent with one about "innovation". Evidence, which Mansfield himself cites from Denison’s work, to justify the importance of the tech
nical functions in growth ( 1, p 5), stems from a study (38) which estimates that only about 8 % of the American growth
rate over three decades was due to R and D effort (10, p 47) - this figure agrees broadly with my estimate of page
which indicates that only about 10 - 20 % of technical change is due to efforts in the R and D functions. Yet half of
Mansfield's chapters (3, 4 and 6), in a book expressly on
"technological change" (and not only on the discrete steps of change associated with "innovation"), are explicitly on R & D or innovation; and 70 % of the book's contents are on the same two topics. When the sceptical eye of science is used to look more deeply into the matter, the whole book appears unreliable.
The same author's third instance of definition of "technology", for instance, is qualified (1, p 10):
Technology is society's pool of knowledge regarding the in
dustrial arts. It consists of knowledge used by industry re
garding the principles of physical and social p h e n o m e n a (such as the properties of fluids and the laws of m o t ion), knowledge regarding the application of these principles to production
(such as the application of genetic theory to the breeding of new p l a n t s ) , and knowledge regarding the day-to-day o p e rations of production (such as the rules of thumb of the craftsman). Technological change is the advance of technolo
gy, such advance often taking the form of new methods of p r o ducing existing products, new designs which enable the p r o duction .of products with important new characteristics, and new techniques of organization, marketing, and management.
It is important to distinguish between a technological change and a change in technique. A technique is a utilized
method o f 'p r o d u c t i o n , Thus, whereas a technological change is an advance in knowledge, a change in technique is an al
teration of the character of the equipment, products, and organization which are actually being used. For a technolo
gical change to be used, much more is required than the ex
istence of the information.
There is no doubt that what I have called "technical change"
in this paper needs all the elements which Mansfield lists under the heading knowledge - written-down and informal knowledge of social, natural and technical materials and events,- it is a complex process, when observed closely.
However the nature of the inconsistency referred to before
hand can now be seen to be the key to understanding errors in the whole account. "Technology", it will be recalled, popped in and out of the story in a magical sort of way - sometimes as knowledge, sometimes as an activity which uses knowledge, sometimes as the output of an activity in a bul
ky metamorphosis as a "machine". The major source of error is basic and at the point where the present critique started off: it is to do with the nature of knowledge (the scholar's main working output)in the treatment of the technical func
tions . The same basic error is at (101, pp 1, 3, 201).
Mansfield expressly includes "the rules of thumb of the craftsman" in his aggregate "knowledge", this being a part of his "technology". But the trouble with classing such in
formal knowledge - sometimes described as "know-how" - with the formal knowledge of science is that such a process is unscientific. It is like putting apples and bananas into the same sack, and labelling all of them "apples".
Personal skill, a subject of expressed concern of this paper includes an element of "know-how"; whereas it is quite ob
vious that scientific treatments will always have a particu
lar type of trouble over accounting for skill. Skill is an entity which you cannot easily observe; so it cannot easily be named, described and tied down in its nature and scope in the normal manner of scientific accounts. Mansfield's act of
subsuming one element of personal skill within the aggregate of "knowledge", a word which normally refers to the public knowledge of science, is part of the process of de-skilling by accounts which was discussed briefly in section A of this paper. A key part of human art and artistry (skill) is con
fused with science-knowledge on the spot; and the contention of the paper's subtitle is reinforced, "art lost in a sea of science".
Of course any accountant of any set of events is at liberty to use words as he sees fit; though it is helpful to the reader if the writer either stays with normal convention, or lets the reader know where departure from this may be expected. One complaint of this paper, and in particular of this section of the paper, is that a whole sub-convention
(or perhaps a rhetoric) used about the technical functions is, crudely put in English, "up the wall". A particular complaint about Mansfield's work is that he neither informs his readers when he has strayed from a given convention, nor does he stray consistently.
The "knowledge" of the first sentence of the passage quoted on page 17 above is, crucially, quite a different aggregate from Denison's "advance of knowledge" quoted earlier on
( 1, p 4) as part of the justification for studying "tech
nological change" - which is another variable feast in
Mansfield's usage. Denison's"knowledge" is, rather obviously and from his analytical system adopted, a type of public knowledge: it is freely transmissible, unlike know-how which is defined not to be so (38, p ). So Mansfield's "knowledge"
of one passage is quite different from his "knowledge" of another passage, the variation occurring in a totally un
announced way.
A similar criticism can be made of the treatment of the idea of "technical change" in the context of production functions - treated by Mansfield just two pages after the definition of "technology" quoted. This argument - "The
technology existing at a given point in time sets limits on how much can be produced with a given amount of inputs."
(1 , p 12) - makes no sense at all if "technology" is taken to include private knowledge and know-how. Production func
tions can only be written down on the assumption that there is a type of "best practice" available to all units whatever their internal state of competence. "Know-how" and private, informal knowledge are determinants not of the function it
self, but of the individual production unit's ability (or inability) to be working at an optimum point given the
"state of the art".
Up to now, it is clear that Mansfield's notions of "knowledge"
and of "technology" are almost as variable in meaning as I have taken English-language "science" to be elsewhere (6 , pp 10, 14-18). The first varies from being only public knowledge to becoming an entity which includes elements of personal skill and artistry; the second varies from being knowledge only, to be a construction which includes some
(or perhaps all) of the process of producing useful, bulky artifacts. If the author were an undergraduate natural scien
tist his work would be thrown out by any competent super
visor; if he were a biologist, he would be told that Karl von Linne was turning in his grave.
It may be thought, by some, to be unfair that I have singled out one author for special criticism in thes section of the paresent paper; but there is evidence of an array of aberra
tion and misconception on the exercise of .the technical func
tions, including:
a) the innovation aberration and troubles about "tech
nology transfer", dealt with in section C below ? b) the de-skilling - by-accounts thesis, which has been
introduced already and is examined further in the context of design from page 30 and in section E;
c) a form of alienation by the "humane" scholar from man, homo faber: see also section D of this paper and an extended argument on "alienation, individua
lism and revolution" elsewhere ( 39 ) .
Dealing with Mansfield's more basic errors simply provides a ready example of how accounts can go wrong when the expressed topic of interest is "technology", and it is handled by those who do not know the technical functions well.
There are many more examples of the variable nature of "tech
nology" in Mansfield's work and that of other economists.
Kennedy and Thirlwall, in the major literature review for the Royal Economic Society already noted, have definded "techni
cal progress" (changes in techniques and "machines") in terms of "changes in technology" (changes in knowledge); and they also produced an example of the hysteria of the innovation aberration (10 , p 43) which is discussed more fully below.
Nelson and his co-authors fall into exactly the same trap in the major study already cited. They define technological ad
vance as an increase in knowledge relevant to economic acti
vity: so technology, in this instance, is knowledge relevant to the"production of goods and services in organised economic activity". However the authors are still able to define as technological advances, such artifacts as the automatic loom, improved catalytic process equipment for producing gasoline and the gas refrigerator ( 9 , pp 7, 8, 19, 40): see also page 2 above. These specific ’advances'’ are in the form of hardware, rather than any type of knowledge: and "technology"
has changed its meaning, as in Mansfield's case. To argue away this criticism as simply as semantic wrangle would be the
equivalent of arguing away the role of engineers and techni
cal specialists. For it is in just that area of Mansfield- Nelson-Kennedy-Thirlwall confusion, between knowledge and hardware, between the idea and the artifact, that technical skills are crucially needed. In a world in which there is usually no real hope of discerning what is "best practice", the art is to achieve a type of second- or third-best
which can compete with others (40, p 4 ; 19, p 15 ),
I have concentrated here on Mansfield's book, partly because he has laid out the inappropriate nature of his typology rather obviously: any diligent reader who had a background in engi-
neering practice could pick up his errors. It is partly, too, because Mansfield's book has been much quoted, and presumably much read as well. However, the same kind of account of syste
matic bias and aberration would be easy enough to set down for the Nelson study ( 9), or for any of the four "best" literature reviews on "innovation" cited by Nelson and Winter in their 1977 article (35, p 46; 41; 42; 43;10). And when this account of in
consistency over the nature of "technology" is read with the treatment on "innovation" in the next section of this paper, the validity becomes more apparent of the points made at page 5 above; the reality of technical change is lost to view.
The much-quoted views of Galbraith (e.g. 1 ,p 93) that only large firms can, in the modern world, produce significant technical change is foolish and incorrect: those who know the manufacturing process well realize that machine operators are proper Techniker who are in the business of producing tech
nical change - along the lines indicated earlier on in the argument about the world that Alice found. The Nelson study is as much littered with inconsistency over the nature of
"technological change", or "advance" as Mansfield's, which comes from the same tradition and era. In one place "techno- ligical" change is held to be partly determined by itself, in a classic case of circularity of argument - a condition which the chosen typology can hardly avoid, when the key topic of the book's title turns out to vary in nature. In a section on the "factors influencing the direction of technological ad
vance " fin hardware termsj , the authors assert that "the pace of technological advance £in hardware]] varies strikingly from one product field to another, and from time to time". Under
lying causal ■ factors are shifts in "the rewards from particu
lar kinds of technical [hardware"] advance", and "shifts in the stock of the relevant components and materials, and of know
ledge "-part of "technology" by definition , and of knowledgeable people ( 9, p 28).
Freeman's shift in meaning, in the book which Nelson and Win
ter recommend (43) could hardly be more prominently displayed.
The usage of the book's very first sentence has the incidence of computers and space travel as an obvious example of modern
"technological innovation";yet the author's closest acts to making a definition of "technology" have it to mean either knowledge relating "the production or acquisition" of arti
facts, or, perhaps, a "formal and systematic body of learning"
(43/ P 15, 28). How on earth, or perhaps elsewhere, can know
ledge transform itself so easily into the form of useful, bul
ky artifacts? Is this part of a modern form of witchcraft ( 5/ PP 4-10)? Rather I believe that Freeman has opted, like Mansfield and Nelson and the others to construct an unreliable political tract rather than a part of scientific inquiry: his discussion of definitions shows that he is happy enough for
"technology" to be a variable feast (43/ PP 28, 29, 367).
Even Schmookler whose work, unlike that of many others of the discussants of "technology", has a good empirical base, is caught talking nonsense when processing his work through the meat-grinder of the "technology" debate. To him an invention is a "prescription for a producible product". Invention and subinvention can be kinds of "technological progress" and so changes in knowledge. Innovation is defined to be the activi
ty which produces hardware. Yet, within the space of seven pages of analysis, the whole delicate system breaks down.
Schmookler argues that" the average house designed by an archi
tect... would be 'routine innovation' , that is a form of sub
invention" (44, pp 2, 6, 9); and once again, the discussion of technical change is transformed into a sort of non-science which is part of the meta-language which I have referred to as In- dustrispeak: see also (29)for how this chapter of de-skilling in accounts fits in with unreliable of an "industrial revolu
tion" which took place in England-Britain. (In Industrispeak usage, there are "skilled" and "unskilled" workers, who are all "blue-collar" people: thus an assumption is made from the start that "white-collar" workers can be classed, with build
ing labourers and office cleaners, as people who deploy no spe
cial artistry at work.)
Economists like Mansfield have been mainly concerned to track down the course, and the causes, of technical change. To the extent that they have asked key questions about a link with formal knowledge for invention (1, p 11), or the degree of
"science-base" for a sector of manufacturing (43, p 163), they have been concerning themselves with inappropriate matters about a world which is characteristically concerned with the unknown and the unknowable, and with the second- and third- best of page 21: see also (45, p 142). This all might be
written down as the "specification problem", which also crops up in a treatment of "management": see also the thesis pro
duced with Sorge about phased lunacy and the "logical song"
(46, p 45), and the "rational fallacy" proposition (19).
Although the exercise of the technical functions is affected by (natural) science, there is no reliable evidence to indicate that this has occurred more so than in other activities such as cooking and crime detection (45, p 146). All analysis which rests on asking leading questions concerning the science - Technik link is suspect, especially given the unreliable flirtation of discussants such as Mansfield with knowledge -
"technology": see also an extended argument concerning the Musson-Robinson plea at page 57 below. Technical problems are
characteristically underspecified in a world where little is known compared with the amount that exponents would like to know. The principal skills involved are to do with constructing the artificial in a state of relative ignorance, rather than manipulating the knowledge derived from nature.
It has already been noted, at pages 1-4 above, that some sociologists have confused the so-called "technology" with
(natural) science, by considering it as a part of the "socio
logy of science"; others have created a sort of black box for themselves by taking "technology" as given, while close ob
servers of the work-place will accept that the technical aspect of it are par excellance those that are most readily altered.
Woodward, for instance, was trying to. track down the state of
technical functions as a determinant of best organizational structure of manufacturing units. But,as Sorge points out, such a preoccupation is pretty fruitless (16 ) ? this is true if only because organizational concerns of manufacturing
(and other ) units tend to be underspecified like everything else: see also nis work with Maurice and Warner on interna
tional comparisons (47) and the "specification problem" of the previous page of this paper.
There is evidence in Woodward's work, and in the treatment of "technology" by other sociologists, that the two types of black box already noted in this paper have been created at the same time; also there are traces of the "innovation aberration" described further in the following section. To Woodward, "technology" has two elements: the tools, instru
ments, machines and technical formulae basic to the perfor
mance of the work; then there is the "body of ideas which ex
press the goals of 'the work, its functional importance,- and the rationale of the methods employed" (48, p 36). Here we have again the habit of classing, virtually as the same thing, through using the same word to describe separate groups of entities, hardware and knowledge: such an accounting choice devalues the role of the technical specialist on the spot, as in the cases outlined at pages 5 and 21 above.
Clearly Woodward has tried to simplify an accounting process which is fraught with complexity and the need to deal with
a great amount of detail; so a "change in technology" tends, in her work, to be a very basic change - such as shifting from the^Siemens-Martin process for making steel to the Basic Oxygen process: a change of process which involves considerable expenditure in plant and shifts in working
practice. But this simplification implicitly devalues, as in the case of the black boxes of the previous paragraph, the main
line exercise of Technik, which is to do with improvement of product and process in the manner of the world that Alice found.
We have here, then, the same sort of trouble which can be found in the work of Mansfield and other economists who deal with "technology". The general political process is strongly influenced by what is said in economics and sociology, while English-speaking politicians tend to imagine that (natural) scientists have some special familiarity to allow them to
speak with apparent confidence of the technical functions (4).
It is in such a way, that the meta-language about work, In- dustrispeak, .is built up and prospers. Discussants only make a public show that they want to deal with real-world "industry"
and typical workplaces. From their habits and actions, it appears that most prefer a meta-world experience of circular argument about events which can become even more unfami
liar after discussion than they were beforehand (33, p 50).
Where "technology" is the expressed topic of concern, de Bono is surely right (see page 15 above) to note that the sub
ject is wispy,and to imply that much of the debate about it is virtually worthless.
C. Technology Transfer and the Innovation Aberration
In the previous section of this paper, I have aimed to point out that "technology" has been a popular topic of discussion and debate over a number of years. Studies and accounts from Nelson (9 ), Mansfield (1 ), Ashby (49), Bronowski (24), the (British) Central Advisory Council for Science and Technolo
gy (50) and OECD (51) have been expressly on the topic. It was part of the subtitle of Forbes' (52) work, Sklair's (12) and Landes' (53). There is a group of historians at work who are explicity concerned with the topic (36) . For various other authors "technology" is probably the most important secondary theme: Galbraith (7 ) on "industry"; Kuznets (26) on "econo
mic growth"; Ravetz (54), Rose and Rose (55), Snow (31), Sa
lomon (56) and Price (57) on "science"; Schmookler (44) on
"invention"; Whitehead on "science and the modern world" (58, p120).
Yet there is a strong suspicion - so strong that it borders on certainty - that, for the most part, these accounts have been wedded to an STH (Science-Technology-Hardware) model of technical change which does not fit the facts ( 6,p 4). There seems to be no consensus about what this thing called "tech
nology" by so many really consists of. Sahal is surely right in the depiction quoted before that the story is much like that of Shakespeare' s Kate "hard to live with - and without".
I have suggested, earlier on, that Kate acts up, and flirts around the scene, because most of her potential suitors do not bother to put in some homework to understand her. Most of those who profess an interest in Kate-Technology aim to find out about her, in the true mode of the Industrispeak
meta-linguists, from others of their own type (32): from other baffled suitors. They do not go in to meet Kate, talk to her at length and observe her nature closely, which turns out to be unshrewish when she is treated right. They practice a sort of non-scholarship on their subject, through writing and speaking about what someone else thought he heard at the village pump. People as eminent as Kuznets (26, p 9), Galbraith ( 7, p23) and Bell (59, p20) are caught using,
and contributing to, a special sort of unreliable rhetoric about distant "industrial" places in which "science" appears to reign supreme. It is, of course, a strange sort of science that is so divorced from observation of materials and events (60) Two elements of the "technology" part of the Industrispeak
dialect are "innovation" and "technology transfer" - Kate's more dramatic acts of temperamental explosion, and the attempts made by her father to marry her off (to transfer her elsewhere
from his house). A treatment of these matters is set down in this section of the paper: starting from the more general of the two (the latter), going on to the other one (innova
tion) and returning to the latter to aim to answer this question a) given that there is little consensus about what
"technology" consists of, can general discussions about "technological transfer" mean anything at all?
Ultimately, what most of those who discuss "technology"
transfer" are aiming at, is a transfer of competence, so that saleable goods and services can be made in a new location, thus generating economic benefit to the recipient of trans
fer . In some way, so the assumption seems to go, having Kate around in your household will enrich your life. The issue is normally defined to be one of econ°mics, or Wirtschaft to the German speaker, being to do with housekeeping (the acti
vity of the Wirt or landlord); so the household metaphor is apt: see also the argument at (46, p 34 )•
The burden of part of my earlier argument was that the award of the title "-ology", given to the technical functions, does nothing to alter their basic characteristics. Despite arguments which hold that there has been one, I do not think that there has been some sort of "technological revolution" within the last 200 years, that has resulted in a fundamental alteration of working methods (6 , pp 26-32): see also the argument at pages 55-59 below. As in the case of "management" work, the main characteristic of activity in these functions is that exponents are doing their best to make their way in a world
which is fairly unknowable and unknown - making a useful arti
fact or simply running the show (45, p 142; 46 )• The award of an "applied science" designation for each type of work, which goes with the use "technology" ,for what has been called Technik in this paper, does not fit the facts at all well. In truth,that phrase is only a piece of political flannel, since science is a public good which does not change on transfer from one to another ( 6, p 3 ).
There are some transitional or preliminary types of artifacts in the technical process, which ante-date the final, saleable products. Then, there are other features of the technical pro
cess'" which have to be noted in any account before the whole mixture makes sense to the outsider . Engineers, and others, produce design drawings and specifications; they produce rough models and prototypes; they design and produce tooling for making prototypes, and then for making production models; they generate a body of"know-how" whose principal characteristics are that it is particularistic and that it mainly consists of personal-, private knowledge and skills; they learn and improve their own skills on the job as they tinker about to improve the product and production process.
Take the design and specification group of functions, first.
Design drawings are produced within a set of conventions. This is inevitable, as designers do not, and cannot,write down
everything that is needed for the construction of the artifacts whose features they are sketching out. If they tried to do
this, the process would become lengthy, costly and cumbersome.
But, more important, even simple common sense indicates that it is a lot better to leave elements of a design indetermi
nate, because the "constructor" of artifacts and "machines"
has his tricks of the trade just as much as the designer. This can be the case of assembly-procedures, machining, tolerances, user-preferences, finishes, materials to be used. The construc
tor is closer to the materials available and will often know their characteristics better than the designer. He may also have a much better feel for the product in use, and inevitably
knows the production process better than the designer does.
The point being made can perhaps best be thrust home through putting forward the contention (on which some expansion is made at page 64 below) that all technical work is essentially
to do with design. This is rather in the manner that all scientific work is to do with research, being an entirely different process and its opposite in certain ways. Design aims to fashion a new configuration of materials; research aims to understand a world which includes those configura
tions which have been fashioned (8, p 48).
The points made in the previous paragraphs indicate that the
"production" man is concerned with, and is involved in, the design process of a new (or an improved) artifact, just as much as the person whose job-title makes him explicitly a "desig
ner", a "design engineer", a "design draughtsman" or a "draughts
man". Simplifying the argument for a moment, the design-spe
cification nexus of activities (including producing models, drawings , written and verbal specifications for those making the final product) is part of a partnership between those whose job-titles stress "design", and those whose job-titles
stress "production". The more skilled the "producers" in their own spheres of competence, the less the "designers" will have to do for the whole process. If the "producers" are not skilled at all, the product will never be made. This is because spe
cialist designers do not have the competence to subsume all the "producer"skills; and anyhow it is quite impossible to produce what might be called a "total specification" for any artifact: design materials which would allow a chimpanzee to do the job. See also p 24 on the "specification problem".
Relaxation of this simplification, which has been made for demonstration purposes, can now help to bring the argument towards its main impact for the process of "technology trans
fer". In the previous section of this paper it was suggested that virtually all of those with the qualification of "engineer"
(HNC, Ing.Grad, BSc, Dipl.-Ing.) are essentially in the
