What causes technologies or new practices to be invented, implement and/or adopted?

[Gloss]

This is a question specifically for the pre-industrial and partially pre-early-modern era, I'm trying to understand how ATLs can create a realistic models to describe development and spread of technologies or advanced practices depending on the socio-political situation of their timelines.
Examples of how this would work would be very useful as well.

 

[Skallagrim]

Bottom line is always the same: it's... the bottom line. Profit. For something to get off the ground, it generally needs to (look like it will) make money for the party bankrolling it, during said party's lifetime. You will always have visionaries who invest in something that may only pay off much later (they tend to see it as a duty to humanity), or eager inventors who hit on something that just happens to have useful applications (which wasn't even what the were looking for)... but in most cases, such types need financial backing. The backers generally just want to make money. So that's it. Whether any given technology is invented is often based on whether someone believes there might be profit in the idea. Whether any given new practice is adopted likewise depends on whether it's more profitable than the old practice.

Secondary to all that is "lack of state opposition". States don't look at just profit, since a profitable thing may be disruptive to the existing order (which they generally wish to prevent). Thus, governments may move to suppress technologies, practices or avenues of research-- even profitable ones, out of other concerns. (In such a case, weigh the existential risk to the existing order against the potential profit. Whichever one seems greater is likely to win out in the short- to medium term... and profit almost always wins in the long term.) In any event, less governmental meddling means faster spread of the tech/research/practice in question.

The active presence of state support may occasionally help tech spread, but is vastly overrated. The problem with state support is that it is highly selective (the state favours supporting technology/research/practice 'x' over various alternatives), and due to the typical plethora of options and possibilities, the chance that the government will spend money backing the 'wrong horse' (a dead end, research-wise) is considerable. Since goverment backing breathes life into said avenue of research, this is often to the detriment of competing avenues (one or more of which may well be superior). Thus, government 'support' all to often retards progress instead of hastening it. (Leaving it to the market, conversely, is still no guarantee that the righ one gets picked, but there's more honest competition between possibilities, and far less 'playing favourites'.)

Finally, regarding socio-political situation: for maximum effectivity, you need your society to be as literate and as educated as possible. The larger the share of the population that is capable of contributing to innovation, the larger the total number of innovations will logically end up being. A simple matter of broadening your base. (And literacy also helps with the transmission and preservation of knowledge in general: reduces the redundancy of "ten guys separately thinking about the same idea without knowing it about each other".) Also, a culture that encourages meritocracy helps, because it reduces the risk that a potential inventor is prevented from inventing things (and/or getting support) due to social limitations.

 

[Albert.Nik]

The one word is Benefit.

 

[James Ricker]

The bottom line money.
If a technology saves people money , helps people make money, or gives them more free time to make money it will be adopted fast.

 

[A Most Sovereign Lady]

Necessity is the mother of invention and innovation.

 

[bernardz]

This is a question specifically for the pre-industrial and partially pre-early-modern era, I'm trying to understand how ATLs can create a realistic models to describe development and spread of technologies or advanced practices depending on the socio-political situation of their timelines.
Examples of how this would work would be very useful as well.

The military is always looking for something better.

 

[Gloss]

I feel like too many answers there look into it as if this was the industrial era where a bunch of entrepreneurs decide how to invest their time as single individual actors, but this seems an out-of-place models for medieval and ancient times.

Necessity is the mother of invention and innovation.

Well but it really doesn't seem like it's that direct of a correlation, especially in light of many inventions feeding a need that wasn't exactly there to begin with or inventions creating themselves new needs.

The bottom line money.
If a technology saves people money , helps people make money, or gives them more free time to make money it will be adopted fast.

Well ok, but it doesn't address the big elephant in the room, how do people actually in practice acquire or come into contact with things they might want to adopt and how they decide its worth.

Bottom line is always the same: it's... the bottom line. Profit. For something to get off the ground, it generally needs to (look like it will) make money for the party bankrolling it, during said party's lifetime. You will always have visionaries who invest in something that may only pay off much later (they tend to see it as a duty to humanity), or eager inventors who hit on something that just happens to have useful applications (which wasn't even what the were looking for)... but in most cases, such types need financial backing. The backers generally just want to make money. So that's it. Whether any given technology is invented is often based on whether someone believes there might be profit in the idea. Whether any given new practice is adopted likewise depends on whether it's more profitable than the old practice.

But would this model really work for medieval and ancient times? It seems unlikely to explain many inventions to me.

The active presence of state support may occasionally help tech spread, but is vastly overrated. The problem with state support is that it is highly selective (the state favours supporting technology/research/practice 'x' over various alternatives), and due to the typical plethora of options and possibilities, the chance that the government will spend money backing the 'wrong horse' (a dead end, research-wise) is considerable. Since goverment backing breathes life into said avenue of research, this is often to the detriment of competing avenues (one or more of which may well be superior). Thus, government 'support' all to often retards progress instead of hastening it. (Leaving it to the market, conversely, is still no guarantee that the righ one gets picked, but there's more honest competition between possibilities, and far less 'playing favourites'.)

I'm kinda skeptic of this, I feel like governmental support is quite important in a world where communication, trade, travel and long-distance contact are not a given, as are not internal stability or most rights. Often state support would mean having protection from other negative factors.

Finally, regarding socio-political situation: for maximum effectivity, you need your society to be as literate and as educated as possible. The larger the share of the population that is capable of contributing to innovation, the larger the total number of innovations will logically end up being. A simple matter of broadening your base. (And literacy also helps with the transmission and preservation of knowledge in general: reduces the redundancy of "ten guys separately thinking about the same idea without knowing it about each other".) Also, a culture that encourages meritocracy helps, because it reduces the risk that a potential inventor is prevented from inventing things (and/or getting support) due to social limitations.

But to me it seems like in most societies the literate class would be so small as to not be as present in many fields as to be able to affect things as much, for example I'm curious of how spread of agricultural techniques and crops, metalworking and military strategies,tactics and weaponry was affected by the presence of a bigger literate class.

 

[Kaze]

The need for it sometimes helps.

But in most times it is warfare, because the human race is a bunch of murder hobos.

Take example of iron and steel - we consider it very useful today, but there was a time that it did not exist. The height of technology and culture at the time was based all around bronze and bronze making, not that rotten metal that occasionally rusts - then someone discovered that an iron sword can cut through a bronze one... and then the technology took off, warfare bred and spread iron and steel making to every corner of civilization.

Take the example of the computer, there was a time where it was an expensive toy for experts. Then along came World War Two - that changed everything for the computer. In the years that followed thanks to the mindset of winning the Cold War, the computer is now the god of our century.

 

[Skallagrim]

I feel like too many answers there look into it as if this was the industrial era where a bunch of entrepreneurs decide how to invest their time as single individual actors, but this seems an out-of-place models for medieval and ancient times.

But would this model really work for medieval and ancient times? It seems unlikely to explain many inventions to me.

I'm kinda skeptic of this, I feel like governmental support is quite important in a world where communication, trade, travel and long-distance contact are not a given, as are not internal stability or most rights. Often state support would mean having protection from other negative factors.

It's interesting that you look at it in this way. I would rather argue that economic laws are timeless, and incentives are always there. It's true that certain historical societies had limited understanding of certain economic principles (example: most Romans failed to understand the actual effects of monetary devaluation). this does not prevent those peinciples from always being true, regardless of what people know or don't know.

Anything you want needs an investment (sometimes tiny, sometimes vast) and people have always financed people without adequate means to pursue avenues of research independently. why? For profit. But mind you, progit can be indirect and it doesn't have to be money in all cases. Many a king has financed artists and inventors because it shows how mighty and grand and generous he is-- the profit he derives is status, first and foremost. But is this an effective way to foster innovation effective? I've argued above that in most cases, it's not the most effective way. The king would be better off financing education for a large number of people, which would produce a considerable number of 'graduates' who can realistically go on to contribute to innovation without his active investment in their affairs.

On the other hand, educating people takes time. And investors (kings or bankers, same difference here!) typically want some returns on their investment within a reasonable time-frame... (And no, that's not "modern". That's one of the most timeless economic realities one can think of.)

how do people actually in practice acquire or come into contact with things they might want to adopt and how they decide its worth.

But to me it seems like in most societies the literate class would be so small as to not be as present in many fields as to be able to affect things as much, for example I'm curious of how spread of agricultural techniques and crops, metalworking and military strategies,tactics and weaponry was affected by the presence of a bigger literate class.

People have the greatest chance of coming in contact with something that's recorded. That's why literacy matters. If you're dealing with two farmers who both do some experimenting with certain tech or certain practices, chances are they'll never hear about each other's exploits. Chances are whatever they come up with dies with them, or maybe gets adopted by their kids and/or neighbours, fil;tyering slowly, slowly, slowly into a broader community. But now suppose literacy levels go up, and at least the gentleman-farmers can read and write. They still do their exoerimenting, they write down what they learn, and that knowledge stays around. It can be copied, distributed to others. Someone can have a copy of both accounts in his library, and realise that the findings of both parties actually complement each other. ("By Jove! That rate of field rotation, using those crops, is most effective! I can triple my harvest with this! I should write this down!")

 

[Analytical Engine]

Never underestimate the power of "there's got to be a better way of doing this".

 

[Jürgen]

There's not one answer. Sometimes the state force changes top-down, some times changes bottom-up, sometimes there's structure which help the spread, sometimes there's structure working against the spread of new things. When you look at a new thing look how it spread in OTL. As example the Catholic Church was a major factor in the spread of knowledge and crops acrosss Europe in the Middle Ages. While in the Islamic world the Hajj resulted in the elite across the Islamic world meeting.

A great example of how things can spread are paper, for almost 1000 years it didn't spread out of China or its vassals. But as the Muslim got access to the knowledge it spread across the Islamic world and then Europe as a wildfire. The Chinese had ways to restrict the spread of paper outside their domains, while Christian and Muslim culture lend itself to the fast spread of new technology.

 

[Gloss]

A bit late but I think the discussion can still be quite fruitful.

It's interesting that you look at it in this way. I would rather argue that economic laws are timeless, and incentives are always there. It's true that certain historical societies had limited understanding of certain economic principles (example: most Romans failed to understand the actual effects of monetary devaluation). this does not prevent those peinciples from always being true, regardless of what people know or don't know.

It's less about them having limited understanding those laws of economics than me and other AH readers and writers not exactly having the same kind of societal understanding of any given pre-modern society to the point where we can somehow rationalize every invention through the same capitalist-entrepreneurial model.

Anything you want needs an investment (sometimes tiny, sometimes vast) and people have always financed people without adequate means to pursue avenues of research independently. why? For profit. But mind you, progit can be indirect and it doesn't have to be money in all cases. Many a king has financed artists and inventors because it shows how mighty and grand and generous he is-- the profit he derives is status, first and foremost. But is this an effective way to foster innovation effective? I've argued above that in most cases, it's not the most effective way. The king would be better off financing education for a large number of people, which would produce a considerable number of 'graduates' who can realistically go on to contribute to innovation without his active investment in their affairs.

But if financing education for a given amount of people means that you can't provide any of them the same kind of support that would help them invent a given thing, would it really be always more advantageous?

On the other hand, educating people takes time. And investors (kings or bankers, same difference here!) typically want some returns on their investment within a reasonable time-frame... (And no, that's not "modern". That's one of the most timeless economic realities one can think of.)

But it's as modern as it can get, how do I explain using that model why the Polynesians were able to do what they did? Or Vikings? Or why did X crop spread in medieval Europe while Y crop didn't? Why did some retroactively basic but really advantageous farming techiniques take so long to spread or get discovered? I don't see how this models helps me at all, it approaches some kind of tech type of "great man history" almost.

People have the greatest chance of coming in contact with something that's recorded. That's why literacy matters. If you're dealing with two farmers who both do some experimenting with certain tech or certain practices, chances are they'll never hear about each other's exploits. Chances are whatever they come up with dies with them, or maybe gets adopted by their kids and/or neighbours, fil;tyering slowly, slowly, slowly into a broader community. But now suppose literacy levels go up, and at least the gentleman-farmers can read and write. They still do their exoerimenting, they write down what they learn, and that knowledge stays around. It can be copied, distributed to others. Someone can have a copy of both accounts in his library, and realise that the findings of both parties actually complement each other. ("By Jove! That rate of field rotation, using those crops, is most effective! I can triple my harvest with this! I should write this down!")

But I think we should discriminate then between what people are literate in this situation, I'd say not all groups of people being literate would bring necessarily a similar amount of benefit to X field.

 

[Richard V]

Any invention useful to the military gets a huge boost. It took the mouldboard plow nearly two thousand years to reach Europe from China, yet the handgonne took less than a hundred years. Euclid’s Elements took nearly two thousand years to reach China, but the arquebus reached China and Japan in a century.

The telescope probably would not have been developed as quickly if the only customers were astronomers. Mechanical time keeping was driven by needs of naval navigation.

I have a theory that even 18th century IR in textile manufacturing was helped by England’s need to pay its professional army and navy. A country is willing to tolerate disruptive innovation if it helps to win wars.

 

[Skallagrim]

A bit late but I think the discussion can still be quite fruitful.

I agree, and as you can see, I am also quite late in responding-- it's exam period, so I have a lot of grading to do. It eats up time, so writing out detailed, well-considered responses only happens whenever i can find a few moments for it.

It's less about them having limited understanding those laws of economics than me and other AH readers and writers not exactly having the same kind of societal understanding of any given pre-modern society to the point where we can somehow rationalize every invention through the same capitalist-entrepreneurial model.

My point is, ultimately, that what I have described is about universal and timeless incentives. It's not a "capitalist-entrepreneurial model", except to the extent that this model is (to some extent, and in a rudimentary state) the natural and default baseline for all human interaction. So, certain things will just always be true, and one of those things is that (exceptions notwithstanding) most humans under most conditions only ever take any action because they believe it will benefit them and/or others towards whome they are sympathetic. This benefit is the broadest definition of the term "profit" (as in "what does it profit me to do [x]"), and as such we may simply say that profit is the fundamental motivator of all human action.

This leads me to the conclusion that any would-be innovation has the best chance of gaining support or interest if it can be shown to profit people in some way. What form that profit takes is inconsequential, of course. Can be anything. What matters is that if someone believes that something will benefit him, he'll do it, and otherwise, he'll spend his time, energy and capital in another -- more profitable -- way. This was true in 10,000 BC, it's true now, and it will be true always. (Unless human nature is fundamentally altered that makes us more different from our current nature than we are presently different from animals-- because animals operate accorsding to that same principle. A tiger hunts because he is hungry, and because he values anding his hunger over the comfort of lazing about. He perceives, no matter how crudely and unconsciously, that hunting will profit him. His situation after the hunt will be more to his liking than his situation beforehand.)

Because of these considerations, it surprises me that you consider the profit motive to be somehow exclusive to a modern, capitalist-entrepreneurial model. I re-iterate that the opposite is true: the profit motive is so utterly fundamental that almost every even vaguely conscious organism on Earth operates in accordance with it. As far as motivations go... everything else is basically just window-dressing.

But if financing education for a given amount of people means that you can't provide any of them the same kind of support that would help them invent a given thing, would it really be always more advantageous?

It wouldn't always be more advantageous in every case. But the thing is that specific, planned allocation of means can very easily be mis-allocated. If you spread out the investment, some people who could do far more with extra investment will miss out and fail to live up to their full potential, but the chances of mis-allocating the bulk of your investment fall away. Also, once people have basic skills (particularly literacy), their capacity to invest in themselves (without your support being needed) expands vastly. They can educate themselves by reading.

All in all, if you can educate fifty guys to an academic standard, or teach a thousand how to read (and fund a public library where they can look stuff up)... do the latter. Always do the latter. Naturally, if you can do both-- so much the better. But the more you target your investment, the bigger the chance your taking an unwise gamble. This is simply the information problem at work. You don't know whether the thing you're investing in is going to pan out, and there may be a lot of possibilities you're not even aware of. Investing broadly in a basic education that allows large number of people to access and record vast amounts of information has an exponential effect. Most of them may not do anything of use, but by broadening the base of potential 'innovators', you will inevitably cause the emergence of innovations that you hadn't even considered.

But it's as modern as it can get, how do I explain using that model why the Polynesians were able to do what they did? Or Vikings? Or why did X crop spread in medieval Europe while Y crop didn't? Why did some retroactively basic but really advantageous farming techiniques take so long to spread or get discovered? I don't see how this models helps me at all, it approaches some kind of tech type of "great man history" almost.

I have already explained why it isn't modern at all. You see to assume here that only education can lead to innovation. That itsn't what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that a desire to gain some form of profit leads people to do things (including new things), and that education is one of the most efficient ways of ensuring that successful 'experiments' get recorded, become replicable, don't have to be redundantly 'inevent and re-invented' by an array of independent tinkerers, and can be efficiently taught to large numbers of people. That doesn't mean that innovation doesn't happen without education, but that education is a vast boon to the efficiency of the process.

It is for this reason that I argue that in general, investing in education is ultimately more efficient that investing in any given 'innovation project'. That doesn't mean that there aren't times when the latter isn't more efficient in the short term, by the way. I speak of general principles here.

But I think we should discriminate then between what people are literate in this situation, I'd say not all groups of people being literate would bring necessarily a similar amount of benefit to X field.

This is obviously true. There are cases when literacy is far more useful than in other cases. Nevertheless, it is always a net positive.

 

[Gloss]

My point is, ultimately, that what I have described is about universal and timeless incentives. It's not a "capitalist-entrepreneurial model", except to the extent that this model is (to some extent, and in a rudimentary state) the natural and default baseline for all human interaction. So, certain things will just always be true, and one of those things is that (exceptions notwithstanding) most humans under most conditions only ever take any action because they believe it will benefit them and/or others towards whome they are sympathetic. This benefit is the broadest definition of the term "profit" (as in "what does it profit me to do [x]"), and as such we may simply say that profit is the fundamental motivator of all human action.

Well this might very well be true but I'd argue that it works far less in explaining or justifying allohistorical technological development, as an example if I want x crop to be adopted in y society, should I create an imagined person that seeks profit or seeks to solve a problem and have him discover or promulgate this new crop? It seems a bit too "microhistorical" and also weak in explaining things, I mean even in this pretty abstract and universally applicable(at least in a vacuum) form, you still have a lot of inventions that simply are not planned which should be accounted for.

If anything a lot of those things don't seem to be tied to specific people doing specific things at specific points of times, instead to it appears as if ultimately it's the societal situation at large that affects such things and if anything profit and necessity is something that just about any society seeks and has and it really doesn't that development is that homogenously placed despite those factors being described as universal by yourself.

This leads me to the conclusion that any would-be innovation has the best chance of gaining support or interest if it can be shown to profit people in some way. What form that profit takes is inconsequential, of course. Can be anything. What matters is that if someone believes that something will benefit him, he'll do it, and otherwise, he'll spend his time, energy and capital in another -- more profitable -- way. This was true in 10,000 BC, it's true now, and it will be true always. (Unless human nature is fundamentally altered that makes us more different from our current nature than we are presently different from animals-- because animals operate accorsding to that same principle. A tiger hunts because he is hungry, and because he values anding his hunger over the comfort of lazing about. He perceives, no matter how crudely and unconsciously, that hunting will profit him. His situation after the hunt will be more to his liking than his situation beforehand.)

Because of these considerations, it surprises me that you consider the profit motive to be somehow exclusive to a modern, capitalist-entrepreneurial model. I re-iterate that the opposite is true: the profit motive is so utterly fundamental that almost every even vaguely conscious organism on Earth operates in accordance with it. As far as motivations go... everything else is basically just window-dressing.

Well then it suffers from the other end side of the problem, it's so universal as to not really tell us anything about why the pace of inventions and their geographical placement is so variegated. I mean I can come up with an array of inventors that just seem to stumble into a series of opportunities that lead inventions and thusly have a quick technological development happen in Y country, but it really doesn't seem realistic. Can I really just have the Romans invent gunpowder for example?

Basically if I use just this as the model behind, it would appear that most inventions are virtually mostly random as far as events with macro-historical significance go and basically I can go and have inventions pop up in places with the only thing I have to mind is literacy, spread of information and partially lifestyle of the people inventing things.

It wouldn't always be more advantageous in every case. But the thing is that specific, planned allocation of means can very easily be mis-allocated. If you spread out the investment, some people who could do far more with extra investment will miss out and fail to live up to their full potential, but the chances of mis-allocating the bulk of your investment fall away. Also, once people have basic skills (particularly literacy), their capacity to invest in themselves (without your support being needed) expands vastly. They can educate themselves by reading.

All in all, if you can educate fifty guys to an academic standard, or teach a thousand how to read (and fund a public library where they can look stuff up)... do the latter. Always do the latter. Naturally, if you can do both-- so much the better. But the more you target your investment, the bigger the chance your taking an unwise gamble. This is simply the information problem at work. You don't know whether the thing you're investing in is going to pan out, and there may be a lot of possibilities you're not even aware of. Investing broadly in a basic education that allows large number of people to access and record vast amounts of information has an exponential effect. Most of them may not do anything of use, but by broadening the base of potential 'innovators', you will inevitably cause the emergence of innovations that you hadn't even considered.

Well the 50:1000(+bonus) ratio is kinda too skewed on one side, in any case there is a lot of inventions that require quite the amount of risk and capital that generally require some help, so at least for those I'd say specific support is helpful and by that I don't mean someone saying "go and invent me this" but a series of (possibly also unplanned) decisions that lead an amount of people to have the capacity to experiment with things other people, regardless of their education and ingeniousness, can't manage to.

I have already explained why it isn't modern at all. You see to assume here that only education can lead to innovation. That itsn't what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that a desire to gain some form of profit leads people to do things (including new things), and that education is one of the most efficient ways of ensuring that successful 'experiments' get recorded, become replicable, don't have to be redundantly 'inevent and re-invented' by an array of independent tinkerers, and can be efficiently taught to large numbers of people. That doesn't mean that innovation doesn't happen without education, but that education is a vast boon to the efficiency of the process.

It is for this reason that I argue that in general, investing in education is ultimately more efficient that investing in any given 'innovation project'. That doesn't mean that there aren't times when the latter isn't more efficient in the short term, by the way. I speak of general principles here.

Well if anything I'm more skeptical of the relatively high degree of confidence in that idea, I feel like that arguing in a vacuum might fare poorly when looking at how things develop on the ground.

All in all, if you can educate fifty guys to an academic standard, or teach a thousand how to read (and fund a public library where they can look stuff up)... do the latter. Always do the latter. Naturally, if you can do both-- so much the better. But the more you target your investment, the bigger the chance your taking an unwise gamble. This is simply the information problem at work. You don't know whether the thing you're investing in is going to pan out, and there may be a lot of possibilities you're not even aware of. Investing broadly in a basic education that allows large number of people to access and record vast amounts of information has an exponential effect. Most of them may not do anything of use, but by broadening the base of potential 'innovators', you will inevitably cause the emergence of innovations that you hadn't even considered.

Also, even if it's not about education, I've heard theories stating that the enclosure period in England allowed a few landholders to consolidate larger estates which, while it effectively deprived resources from many smaller landowners, also allowed for some sort of economies of scale and experimentation with new techniques to take place, something which was not possible when the small landowners were reliant on those small holdings for their subsistence(economical and nutritional).

England had pretty high literacy rates and I'm fairly sure a good amount of small landowners would be part of the literate class, so in this case reducing the pool of inventors(in regards of this field) didn't damage the pace or the amount of development, it boosted it.