Technology Innovation

Industrial Revolution

During certain periods in history innovation in technology have grown at such a rapid pace that they have produced what have become known as industrial revolutions. The term Industrial Revolution originally referred to the development that transformed Great Britain, between 1750 and 1830, from a largely rural population making a living almost entirely from agriculture to a town-centered society engaged increasingly in factory manufacture. Other European nations underwent the same process soon thereafter, followed by others during the 19^th century, and still others (such as Russia and Japan) in the first half of the 20^th century. In some countries this transformation is only now taking place or still lies in the future.

Research and Development

In the 20^th century technological innovation has been to a large degree institutionalized by organized research and development (R&D). This phenomenon paralleled, and to some extent antedated, the second Industrial Revolution. Some large firm in science-intensive industries maintains R&D laboratories employing thousand of people. R&D organizations operated or largely sponsored by national government are another source of technological innovation, as are the engineering and science departments and research institute of universities.

Under these circumstances private inventors are likely to play a progressively smaller role in bringing about innovation, although they are not likely to disappear altogether. That smaller role is especially evident in the stages of innovation that follow invention, development, testing, design, production, marketing, and distribution, that now often require financial and managerial resources that are beyond the capabilities of the inventor entrepreneur.

Technology

Technology as general thinking is a tools to make something more easier, more fast or more practice and saving. Technology is a major cultural determinant, no less important in shaping human lives than philosophy, religion, social organization, or political systems. In the broadcast sense, these forces are also aspects of technology. The French sociologist Jacques Ellul has defined La technique as the totally of all rational methods in every field of human activity, so that, for example, education, law, sports, propaganda, and the social sciences are scale, common parlance limits the term’s meaning to specific industrial arts.

The terms science and technology are often confounded. The confusion arises because so much of contemporary technology is based on the natural sciences, such disciplines an physics, chemistry, biology and other branches of knowledge that deal with the study, measurement, and understanding of natural phenomena. The achievements of the electronics, pharmaceutical, and plastics industries are based on a huge body of scientific investigation.

In simple terms, the concern of science is “why,” and of technology, “how.” The relationship between the two is actually much more complex, however, and it varies from industry to industry; some technologies are science intensive, whereas the manufacture of such items as cigarettes of furniture depends much less on science. In fact, much of modern technology developed without any scientific input whatever, and there are many examples of entire sciences arising from earlier technologies or developing in an effort to explain findings made by scientifically naive artisans. For instance, gunnery led to ballistics; the steam engine, to thermodynamics; powered flight, to aerodynamics; primitive metalworking, to metallurgy; and communications, to radio astronomy.