Introduction

How does technology advance? How can we best assimilate innovation? These questions and others are considered by experts on the theories and applications of technological innovations. Considering subjects as diverse as the diffusion of new technologies and their industrial applications, governmental policies, and manifestations of innovation in our institutions, history, and environment, our contributors map milestones in research and speculate about the roads ahead. Wasteful, inefficient, and frequently wrongheaded, the process of technological changes is here revealed as a describable, scientific force.

Two volumes, available separately and as a set.

• Expert articles consider the best ways to establish optimal incentives in technological progress
• Science and innovation, both their theories and applications, are examined at the intersections of the marketplace, policy, and social welfare
• Economists are only part of an audience that includes attorneys, educators, and anyone involved in new technologies

Chapter