EKH Makromackan seminarium - Josef Taalbi

Höstterminen ser lovande ut för lunchseminarierna Makromackan! Först ut är Josef Taalbi på EKH/LU som kommer att dela med sig av sin pågående forskning inom ett klassiskt och viktigt område i ekonomisk historia - kom och lyssna 9 september då han ger ett seminarium med titeln nedan:

Combinatorial evolution in technology history

Josef Taalbi webbsida (lu.se)

Välkomna!

Jonas

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Abstrakt: Technological development is commonly viewed as a process of “combinatorial evolution”, where inventors probe the space of adjacent possible technologies by searching among combinations of available technologies. Seminal contributions have called attention to that combinatorial evolution may lead to extremely fast expansion of technological possibilities, and long-run hockey stick curves. However, scant long-run data has made it difficult to settle whether these theoretical propositions are in line with empirical data. This study explores the combinatorial evolution using new data on a phylogenetic network (parent-offspring relations) of major innovations in human history and offers a theoretical framework for testing the structure of parent-offspring relations, building on the literature on combinatorial evolution, and technological change as a branching process. The results strongly support a view where combinatorial evolution is tree-like, rather than expanding super-exponentially. Moreover, the rate at which adjacent possible innovations have been discovered points to increased research productivity already from the 13th century. These results point to that tree-like combinatorial evolution helps explain long-term innovation, but must also include factors that have affected research productivity and research intensity over the long haul, for instance medieval technological diffusion between China, the Muslim world and Europe, and the scientific revolution.

Notera! Om vi inte får plats i Magna Charta används istället Alfa1:1104, en trappa ner!