Nathan Rosenberg

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Perspectives on technology

I "PERSPECTIVES ON Technology" utforskar Nathan Rosenberg de komplexa relationerna mellan teknologi och ekonomisk tillväxt. Boken består av artiklar skrivna under en tioårsperiod, från tidigt 1960-tal till tidigt 1970-tal, och reflekterar Rosenbergs intresse för långsiktiga ekonomiska tillväxtprocesser, särskilt i industrialiserande samhällen.

Rosenberg betonar vikten av att förstå teknologiska förändringar genom att gå från det allmänna till det specifika. Han argumenterar för att man måste närma sig teknologier som individuella fall snarare än att se på dem som en homogen kategori. Detta kräver en djupare insikt i de specifika detaljerna av varje teknologi och dess kontext, vilket innebär att man måste överge tanken på att analysera teknologiska effekter isolerat från de samhälleliga förhållandena.

Bokens innehåll är präglat av en medvetenhet om teknikens centrala roll i ekonomisk tillväxt. Rosenberg kritiserar den neoklassiska ekonomins begränsningar och föreslår att en mer nyanserad förståelse av teknologiska fenomen kan uppnås genom att överskrida dessa intellektuella gränser. Hans arbete erbjuder en original synvinkel som förenar kvantitativa ekonomiska analyser med sociologiska och historiska perspektiv.

Perspectives on Technology consists of papers written by Nathan Rosenberg over a ten-year period, from the early 1960's to the early 1970's. Their origin was in Professor Rosenberg's interest in long-term economic growth processes and, especially, in the behavior of industrializing societies. The form and direction which this book has taken reflect two basic influences: (1) a growing awareness of the centrality of technological phenomena in generating economic growth, and (2) a growing sense that, in spite of the basic and genuine insights into technological phenomena provided by the neo-classical economics, a deeper and richer understanding of the phenomena can only be achieved by a willingness to step outside of the limited intellectual boundaries of this mode of reasoning.

Thus Professor Rosenberg argues in Perspectives on Technology that, in considering technological change, one has to move from the general to the specific, from “Technology” as a concept to “technologies” as individual cases. One must be prepared to “dirty one’s hands” in acquiring a familiarity with the relevant details of the technology itself. One must give up the notion that it is possible to analyze the effects of technological change independently of its context, since the same technology will have very different consequences in societies whose institutions, values, resource endowments, and previous histories vary.

Professor Rosenberg’s work on technology occupies an important and original mid-position between the rigorously quantitative work of economists, which is often based on strict models, and the work of sociologists and of historians of science, which tends not to focus directly on the specifics of concern to economists. Professor Rosenberg writes with a breadth of vision and with sensitivity, and his Perspectives on Technology will be of direct interest and relevance not only to economists and to historians and to sociologists but also, since the technical language in the book has purposely been kept to a minimum, to a wide range of readers interested in technological phenomena.