Technological innovation as template for cognitive innovation

Enabling Governance through the Dynamics of Nature (Part #11)

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The above argument can be further developed by considering how innovators engage cognitively with their environment through technology. Much is made of the role of individual creativity in technological innovation. The objects and applications resulting from this creativity are a focus of technological development and commerce. It is these which subsequently become the focus of attention, especially when they enable welcome behaviour modification. The most obvious examples are mobile phones, iPhones, iPods and the iPad.

It is accepted that such objects, and the manner in which they are used, modify attitudes to technology and behaviour in relation to technology. Again the most obvious examples are offered by web technology, as studied by Sherry Turkle (Life on the Screen: identity in the Age of the Internet, 1997; The Second Self: computers and the human spirit, 2005; Evocative Objects: things we think with, 2007; Falling for Science: objects in mind, 2008). Much has been made of virtual worlds, such as Second Life, and more recently of social networking sites and internet addiction.

Such implications have been recently explored by Nicholas Carr (The Shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains, 2010):

Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic -- a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is the ethic of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption -- and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.

The concern here -- with respect to learnings from nature -- is somewhat different. The question is how technologies embody a structure that may suggest, and catalyze, a transformation in the way people reframe their own identity and behaviour in relation to nature. This potential is indeed implicit in many technologies, perhaps most obviously the automobile. Schauberger offers a number of examples in relation to water flow -- understood more generally as fluid flow. More intriguing is the possibility that many technologies have this cognitive consequence to a degree that is not fully recognized. Nature might itself be considered to be a "technology" with such implications -- many offering sophisticated insights in danger of being lost through alienation from nature..

This exploration follows from an argument developed in relation to personal computers (Computer Use as Philosophy in Operation: metaphors of the inner game, 2003). An approach more closely related to a fan focused on the wind turbine (Moving Symbols: radical change in psycho-social energy possibilities? 2008). Both make reference to the work of Robert D. Romanyshyn (Technology as Symptom and Dream, 1989). Also of interest is the work of Erik Davis (TechGnosis: myth, magic and mysticism in the Age of Information, 2005). There is the further possibility that society effectively engenders the creative ingenuity for such innovation in response to the complex of cognitive challenges that people face.

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