A functional approach for studying technological progress: Extension to energy technology
A functional approach for studying technological progress: Extension to energy technology
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DOI：
10.1016/j.techfore.2007.05.007
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发表时间：
2008-07-01
影响因子：
12
通讯作者：
Magee, Christopher L.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Koh, Heebyung;Magee, Christopher L.
本文扩展了一个广泛的功能类别的方法，最近开发和应用于信息技术的技术能力进步的研究，以第二个关键的情况下，能源为基础的技术。该方法适用于相同的三个功能操作存储，运输和转换，用于信息技术，首先建立一个100多年的数据库，为每一个三个能源为基础的功能类别。与第一篇论文中信息技术的结果一致，能源技术的结果表明，功能方法提供了一个稳定的方法来评估较长时间的技术进步趋势。此外，与第一项研究中发现的信息技术相似，能源技术的功能能力显示出持续的（如果不是持续的）改进，最好用时间的指数来定量描述。没有能力的不连续性-即使有很大的技术位移-和缺乏明确的饱和效应被发现与能源，因为它是与信息。然而，能源和信息技术之间的一些关键差异被发现，这些差异包括：在整个时期内，能源技术的进展率较低：信息技术每年为19-37%，能源技术为3-13%。不同能源类型之间的能力进展差异最大，与信息技术相比，能源的数据恢复和度量定义更具挑战性，这些发现被解释为能源和信息之间的根本差异，包括能源的损失和效率约束。我们应用惠特尼的洞察力，这些根本的差异导致自然模块化的信息技术工件。基于信息的技术比基于能源的技术进步率更高，因为可分解系统可以更快地进步，因为独立开发比同步开发更容易。此外，我们的研究结果的广泛影响，技术和社会变革之间的关系的研究进行了简要讨论。(C)2007年爱思唯尔公司All rights reserved.
This paper extends a broad functional category approach for the study of technological capability progress recently developed and applied to information technology to a second key case-that of energy based technologies. The approach is applied to the same three functional operations-storage, transportation and transformation-that were used for information technology by first building a 100 plus year database for each of the three energy-based functional categories. In agreement with the results for information technology in the first paper, the energy technology results indicate that the functional approach offers a stable methodology for assessing longer time technological progress trends. Moreover, similar to what was found with information technology in the first study, the functional capability for energy technology shows continual-if not continuous-improvement that is best quantitatively described as exponential with respect to time. The absence of capability discontinuities - even with large technology displacement-and the lack of clear saturation effects are found with energy as it was with information. However, some key differences between energy and information technology are seen and these include:Lower rates of progress for energy technology over the entire period: 19-37% annually for Information Technology and 3-13% for Energy Technology.Substantial variability of progress rates is found within given functional categories for energy compared to relatively small variation within any one category for information technology. The strongest variation is found among capability progress among different energy types.More challenging data recovery and metric definition for energy as compared to information technology.These findings are interpreted in terms of fundamental differences between energy and information including the losses and efficiency constraints on energy. We apply Whitney's insight that these fundamental differences lead to naturally modular information technology artifacts. The higher progress rates of information-based as opposed to energy-based technologies follows since decomposable systems can progress more rapidly due to the greater ease of independent as opposed to simultaneous development. In addition, the broad implications of our findings to studies of the relationships between technical and social change are briefly discussed. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.