Waves of Technology

• Invention vs innovation
Invention - novel product, device, process, concept
Examples: Printing press, electricity, telephone
Innovation - Introduction of a newer and better solution that meet new requirements or
existing market needs
Examples: Examples: introduction of iPhone, tablet, flat screen TV, etc.

• Smihula’s concept of the wave of technological innovations

• The wave of technological innovations

• Frequency and radicality not distributed uniformly in the course of time
• Has innovation phase – real application
• Small and slow successes
• Has application phase – exploiting and extending existing innovations
• Quick progress and eventually slow as the limits are reached
• Need to improve, beat competitors, solve problem, or increase efficiency of work
• Waves of technological innovations
• Waves of innovation – tech revolutions follow each other in logical sequence (one creates the
conditions for the next)
• Length of waves are getting shorter as a result of acceleration of technological progress and
economic growth
• Economic crisis and stagnation characterizes the end of any wave and its application phase
• This condition demands new inventions and innovations “depression-trigger effect”
• First wave: Agricultural Revolution
Domestication
Farming and irrigation
Use of “living batteries” (people and animals)
Land as basis for economy, culture, power
Work = labor, animal (horsepower)
Decentralization of economy, stratification
First wave: agricultural revolution

Domestication Food security

Population Growth Formation of Settlements

Waste, disease, issues on resource distribution

• Second wave: Industrial Revolution

18th to 19th centuries
Discovery of new worlds
Population growth, movement into towns
Pressure on timber forest
Invention of engine
Second wave: industrial revolution
Factory = model efficiency
mass production
mass consumption
mass media
mass eduation

• Third wave: information/knowledge age

Transitions in the third wave
Integration of more functions into fewer parts
Massification, standardization (2nd wave) vs. customization (3rd wave)
Multiple intelligences and competencies (and higher educational attainment)
Third wave: information/knowledge age
Transitions on in the 3rd wave
“prosumers” (producers are consumers and vice versa)
“do-it-yourself” (service)
Technology as indicator of development

• Fourth wave/fifth wave: electronics and microelectronics

Informmersion (information invasion)
• Fifth wave of technological innovations
Vision of “information society” as excellent stimulus
5th wave started 1980s with cheap computers
Brought dramatic changes in the society
“globalization”
1980s to 1990s – rise of mass use of computers, internet, mobile phones, etc.
Fully integrated part of everyday life by 2010
Larger profits and new ideas start to emerge in other sectors

• Post information technology revolution

• Prediction – areas of science & technology to experience dynamic growth:

• Pharmaceutical

• Biomedical sciences: genetic engineering, cloning, new pharmaceuticals

• Transhumanism – modifying to improve properties of living beings

• Nanotechnology and energy less harmful ecologically

• Increase consumption of energy due to use of hydrogen and oxygen as basic fuel

• Use of nuclear power as energy source

• robotics