This ACtioN Briefing will summarize and explore some “practitioner-relevant” insights from this June’s Structure of Technology Workshop. That workshop convened over 30 scholars in an attempt to consolidate recent advances in our understanding of technology. Specific attention was be paid to recent work emphasizing complementarity over substitutability, propagating effects, network heterogeneity, latent relationships, and diversity of output over quantity. Collectively, these approaches make inroads into what may turn out to be richer theoretical frameworks to describe and understand the structure of technology, with parallels that suggest a deep theory of technology lies ahead. Spurred by an urgency to understand the societal impacts of technology, the workshop hopes to advance our ability to conceive and model technology’s structure.
In this one-hour ACtioN Briefing, SFI Science Board co-chair and Structure of Technology Workshop co-organizer Ricardo Hausmann will summarize some of his contributions to workshop along with other ideas and insights that surfaced during the three-day workshop. The discussion session will emphasize workshop ideas that seem relevant for decision-makers in government, industry, and civil society.
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