Technological Innovations and Developmental Trajectories: Social Factors as Evolutionary Forces

International audience"This chapter describes technological innovation, developmental trajectories, and modes of social organization. It addresses the technological inventions and their order and mode of development as well as the possible role of the individual in the differential occurrences of inventions. It analyzes the mechanisms underlying innovation and fixation processes. It suggests that technological evolution is made up of both continuous and discontinuous innovations. This chapter shows that in farmer-pastoralist cultures, when length of learning times imposed restrictions, new technical tasks developed in closed systems instead of open systems, thereby directly contributing to societies' growing complexity." (source éditeur