Is it a sign of senility or hubris that I occasionally post pieces of my thesis work in this blog? No idea. But here is a piece on disruptive technology.
While in many cases a disruptive technology can be seen as a technology that replaces the incumbent technology one must not forget that this replacement also displaces the social organisation around the displaced technology. Therefore printing presses replaced the scriptoria and also change the role of the scribe. Railways replaced canals and also changed the way in which the social organisation around the canals functioned. Therefore railroads did not only make an impact on the barge pilot but also on the bargeman, lock keeper, canal owners, canal-side innkeepers, barge builders, waterway engineers and the horse trade (most barges were horse drawn). This process is not only one of historical interest. Examples of disruptive technologies are all around us. It is, in fact, a continual process. Digital cameras are replacing photographic film, flash drives replace floppy disks, DVD players replace VHS players. Each change brings has social and economic effects to a larger of smaller degree.
Actually I wanted to use something else but after looking around I could not find a good work on the social history of writing and writing implements. Not languages but a social history of putting text on paper. This feels like a book I would like to read. Instead I found Henry Petroski’s book The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance which was not as good as I hoped it would be. I thought it would be a social history but it turned out to be more of a vague technical history which makes brief stops at erratic points in the development of the pencil. But to be fair I have only read a third of the book – so I still might change my mind.