1.1 Technology Invention from Medieval Agriculture to Computer Chip

Roger Bacon’s thirteenth-century view of the applied use of technology demonstrates how individuals are able to imagine the ways technologies can be put to use long before the actual technology reaches the maturity in which it can be put to use. Bacon predicted:

Machines may be made by which the largest ships, with only one man steering them, will be moved faster than if they were filled with rowers; wagons may be built which will move with incredible speed and without the aid of beasts; flying machines can be constructed in which a man …_may beat the air with wings like a bird_…_machines will make it possible to go to the bottom of seas and rivers.^[6]

The acceptance of an invention or the extent to which, once accepted, its implications are realized by the majority of a population depends on many factors. Influencing elements, such as the economic condition of society, the imagination of its leaders (businesses and government) and the attitudes of the people towards the invention, all lead to the acceptance of technology more than the application of the technology itself. As demonstrated by many cultures across the globe, the past is littered with philosophers, scientists and inventors whose ideas were such a departure from the popular belief that, in order to suppress a challenge to an old belief, the innovator and early adopters were often imprisoned or killed. Pre-modern scientists such as Johannes Kepler and Giordano Bruno were persecuted because they believed that the dogmas of the Catholic Church were wrong. In 1616, in order to prove his theories regarding the non-stationary position of the earth, which he claimed to revolve around the sun, Galileo developed optical technology – the telescope – which offered proof to corroborate and substantiate his claim. Chastised by the Inquisition, to save himself from being burnt at the stake Galileo was forced to recant, and that the earth was, as expressed in Christian theology, stationary in the centre of the universe.^[7]

Galileo’s example illustrates the fact that, for a very long time, society has met technology with some resistance. In our twenty-first-century western culture we do not value the importance of religion and the church so much as in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The resistance to Galileo did not derive solely from a fear of loss of power from the church. The very basis of human life and existence as it was then was being questioned, merely due to a technological invention. Technology was seen as disruptive of livestyles. This was as true then as in the late nineteenth century. Thomas Edison was also persecuted when society started adopting electricity with more enthusiasm, as Israel documents: ‘Edison was “continuously being annoyed by letters from cranks and lunatics from all over the world”, several of whom made threats against him for perceived wrongs.’^[8] The application of technology is not always obvious, and foreseeing its impact on business and society is often regarded as ‘wishful thinking’. Traditionally, prognosticators have been met with scepticism, not because of a lack of comprehension by the rest of society, but due primarily to two factors: the slow communication of a technology’s benefits to the majority and fear when it appears to undermine a pre-existing value or belief. This condition is evident in today’s society; one could argue that it is even amplified by the very technology that has been labelled as the problem. For example, anti-capitalist and anti-globalization groups using the Internet to communicate their protest are enough to show how ironic is the position of anti-technology groups. Of course the issues which concern anti-globalization groups are mostly noble (environmental issues, exploitation of labour, amongst others), but the focus of their criticism is not always the root cause of the problems, only the instruments used in the process, such as technology itself.

Early adopters of the Internet recognized the potential use of the technology for commerce and formed companies to capitalize on the technology’s ability to revolutionize business. Many of these firms, the so-called dot-coms, met an untimely demise, not due to the functions of the technology but the rapid decline of the industry in which they were operating, accelerated by investors’ changing attitudes. Unfortunately, these early pioneers were swept up in the ensuing euphoria, exacerbated by the media hype on the potential returns of technology. Many of these start-up firms (today called ‘dot-bombs’, with reference to their failure) developed technology-based business models that – to their surprise – were not viable when applied to either a traditional low-margin business (such as the aforementioned grocery delivery firms), or were dependent on achieving an unrealistic number of paying subscribers. Other firms, suddenly deluged with operating capital, lost sight of the fundamentals of running a rapidly growing business and adopted poor management practices, seemingly forgetting the basics of cash management. Tragically, after a relatively short time in historical business terms, the promise of continued double-digit returns was met with the realities of competition. Investor expectations rapidly eroded, and the market reacted by reducing the amount of available new investment capital rather quickly. Thus, at a time when many of these firms needed additional investment capital to grow, the change in investors’ attitudes towards the technology industry reduced their ability to secure funding to develop to the next level of business maturity. Oddly, the original value propositions of the technologies used in conjunction with the Internet have not changed; it is merely the perception of benefits that has been reduced. Reminding us of the California gold rush of 1849, the majority of start-up firms did not strike a vein of gold and establish business activity that would sustain them as viable long-term entities. Nineteenth-century firms providing the infrastructure for the migration to California – such as the railways and the merchants supplying picks and shovels – made the lion’s share of the revenues from the gold-miners.

The Advance of Technology

The need to advance technology as a mechanism to improve the human condition appears to be a universal constant in society in all geographies throughout history. The only variables that separate one generation from another – and one culture from another – are the rate of technological change and the acceptance by society. The boom and bust cycles of economic activity are of course linked to the introduction of new technologies and their adoption by large segments of the population. This cyclical pattern of adaptation is expressed by Jean Gimpel’s observations on the technological breakthroughs of the Middle Ages:

Between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, western Europe experienced a technological boom. Both that boom and the subsequent decline can now be seen to offer striking parallels to Western industrial society since 1750, and to the present situation in the United States in particular.^[9]

However, our popular notion is that during the past 200 years, the speed at which technology is advancing has been moving at an ever-advancing rate. Not surprisingly, the rate of technological acceptance by society appears to be moving at a faster rate. However, this rate of acceptance follows just slightly behind the rate of technology innovation. The increased rate of acceptance is attributed to the steady increase in the education levels of society. Thomas Stewart observed:

In a report issued in 1995, which controlled for factors like age of equipment, industry, and establishment size, EQW [educational quality of the workforce] showed that, on average, a 10 percent increase in workforce education level led to an 8.6 percent gain in total factor productivity. By comparison, a 10 percent rise in capital stock – that is, the value of equipment – increased productivity just 3.4 percent. Put another way: the marginal value of investing in human capital is about three times greater that the value of investing in machinery.^[10]

As society in general becomes more computer-savvy or technology literate, the net effect is an increase in overall productivity. In other words, the next generation of graduating students will come equipped with the knowledge of fundamental business tools such as eMail, word processing and spreadsheets, therefore reducing the need for this type of training expense. Consequently, the next generation of workers will need to learn a new class of technologies and will require even greater amounts of additional training in order to take advantage of the new advances in technology.

Therefore, one may surmise that the rate of technological acceptance by society is directly proportional to the educational level of the individuals in society. Investing in education appears to have a high long-term payoff, yet training budgets are often cut at the first inkling of spending reduction. Conversely, part of this increase in computer literacy can be attributed to the effectiveness of mass media marketing in generating peer pressure within society to acquire the latest technology, hence shifting training for these basic skills to the individual on his/her own time. Regardless of which factor has the greatest influence, the adoption of technology by society cannot be generalized, but must be analysed on a case-by-case basis. In addition, the attributes of a technology must be viewed in the context of its overall value to the segments of population it intends to serve. Developing an understanding of the features of a technology and the rate of adoption in each segment of society is necessary for businesses using technology in the delivery of their products and services to determine which technologies have the greatest effectiveness within population segments.

Statistics illustrating the accelerated adoption rate of new technology showed that while it took 38 years for 50 million people to listen to the radio, 13 years for TV, and 10 years for cable TV, it has taken only five years for people to use the Internet. Richard Buckminster Fuller observed in 1980 that there is a time lag between a technology’s invention and its practical social adoption. In his words:

My half-century experience also discovered the natural, unacceleratable lags that existed between inventions and industrial uses in various technical categories, which occur as follows: in electronics – two years; aerodynamics – five years; automobiles – ten years; railroading – fifteen years; big-city buildings – twenty-five years; single family dwellings – fifty years.^[11]

The time lag he observed represents the time required to educate the population on a technology’s benefits, convince society of the technology’s improvements, and allow the business economies of scale to reach a point of production where the acquisition of the technology becomes affordable and desirable. As I discussed elsewhere, architects incorporate practical advantages of new technology into structures shaping our behaviour, while architecture involves employing a more complex process of changing social taste. The matter of adoption of any sort of technology by individuals is an exercise in shaping the behaviour of consumers as new technological marvels emerge.^[12] Traditionally, the factors propelling the advancement of technology have been centred on three basic themes: to reduce the amount of labour required for a specific or general task; the direct application for military use; and/or to facilitate commerce. These objectives have not been mutually exclusive, in many cases they enjoy a product/by-product relationship.

The Reduction of Labour

During the Middle Ages and subsequently until the late eighteenth century, the majority of the population was engaged in agriculture and the production of foodstuffs. The segments of society such as the ruling class, gentry, merchants, clergy, scholars and artisans were the minority and the gap between the haves and have-nots was much wider than in today’s society.

In medieval society, the socio-economic conditions were amplified by changes in climate and the development of technology that directly reduced the need for labour in agricultural production. The effects of natural changes in the environment (that is, droughts, floods, plague, amongst others) significantly affected the availability and productivity of the labour force. Like the ebbs and flows in the information-based eBusiness society, the shortfalls in revenues, compensation packages, working conditions and living environment make the labour force of today extremely mobile. Unlike their medieval counterparts, contemporary labourers can adapt and seek out work more akin to how they want to work and in the type of organization which suits their work style.

The 400 years between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries brought a period of deliberate development in technologies that would harness the power of nature to serve man. Simply converting the forces of wind, water and fire to reduce the amount of labour needed to produce foodstuffs was the most desired goal. At that time, approximately 90 per cent of the population was engaged in agricultural production; foodstuffs were priced based on seasonality. Nowadays, however, the bulk of the population is no longer engaged in food production. Foodstuffs are now tied to commodity pricing with very low margins. It is interesting that, like our medieval counterparts, one of the first uses of the Internet and eCommerce technologies is the distribution of foodstuffs in home grocery delivery. More surprising is the fact that Internet business models centring on complex technology-intensive solutions were not sustainable under the low volume of transactions generated by early adopting households. As seen above, organizations such as Webvan demonstrated that the technology-intensive solutions could facilitate an interaction with a customer to order goods, but that delivery of groceries and other products was only cost effective under business conditions of high volume, due to the nature of the low-margin grocery business. Conversely, the hybrid approach used by Tesco exploits the Internet to streamline the order-taking process, while the fulfilment of each order is done by low-cost labour. In this hybrid model, when the volume of business increases to a point when it is no longer efficient to use the existing labour resources, technology will be added at key points within the order fulfilment process, justified by the aggregated savings of labour cost. Clearly, a manual process facilitating a low-margin product must reach a substantially larger volume before a large capital investment in technology can be justified. This seemingly simple axiom has been true since technological implementations began and can be witnessed in grain milling during the Middle Ages as well as in harvesting wheat in the early twentieth century. Surprisingly, it was a lesson that many dot-com firms and investors learned (again!) at great expense.

The underlying reason for technological change in medieval times was to improve the utilization of peasant labour, thereby creating additional resources in order to increase the amount of land that could be cultivated. The by-product of the increase in food production was population growth. The advance of mechanical technology during the twentieth century changed the output of society from agrarian to industrial. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, very few farmers actually exist. Now, the lion’s share of agricultural output is produced by large conglomerates such as ADM and Cargill, who use a vast array of technologies such as geo-positioning satellites (GPSs) and soil fertility monitoring systems to maximize crop yields. Very different from the simple three-field rotational crop farming that was the technological breakthrough in the Middle Ages.^[13]

In modern terms, technology was employed to replace certain aspects of the workforce and redirect it to new activities, or even increase the capacity of agricultural production. Medieval people did not see these improvements as a threat to the workforce, but rather as a means to channel more energy towards the improvement of living conditions. Unfortunately, an alarming number of segments in our modern-day workforce view technology and the globalization of the labour market as a threat to their ability to earn a living. Ironically, the attitude of contemporary societies toward employing technology as labour-saving devices is rooted deeply in the medieval mindset. In some ways, the adaptability and ingenuity of the medieval workforce was more advanced in its approach to disseminating technology within specialized labour groups as a product of the guild system, as will be explored insection 2.4.

The Rate of Adoption

Twenty-first-century technologists and technology marketing professionals often cite the accelerated rate of technology adoption by society as a product of the sophisticated modern world. However, when a technology has a clear value proposition to a specific market segment, it is invariably adopted at an accelerated rate. This higher rate of adoption can be seen in a variety of technologies from today’s sophisticated mobile phones to medieval windmills during the twelfth century. Taking a retrospective look at the adoption of windmill technology by northern European countries during the Middle Ages indicates that the rate of adoption was so rapid that, if charted, it would resemble a chart of potential sales growth used in a dot-com company investment prospectus. Although the exact date is not known, approximately between 1170 and 1179 the windmill became a standard feature of the medieval countryside. In fact the ‘charter of St. Mary’s at Swinshead in Lincolnshire, England in 1179 mentions the windmill as if it had been in use there for quite some time’.^[14] Within a generation, the windmill was no longer considered a novelty in Britain or Europe, but a recognizable technological improvement which enhanced agricultural output.

Furthermore, it can be argued that the adoption of a technology by society is made complete when governments begin to tax its use. Taxation indicates that a technology has reached a level of saturation within society that its everyday use can generate enough revenues to make its regulation worthwhile. If indeed taxation validates the adoption of a technology by a culture, the integration of windmills into medieval society was complete when Pope Celestine III (1191–1198) ruled that windmills should pay tithes.^[15] This rapid acceptance of technology reminds us of the proliferation of PC technology in contemporary society and the rapid demand to be connected to the Internet. Furthermore, as soon as the Internet and associated transaction technologies became a legitimate mechanism for conducting business, then world governments and local authorities started to introduce legislation to levy taxes on eCommerce. Fortunately for business and individuals, governments have not yet imposed widespread Internet taxation. This is due to the long-term uncertainty of how eCommerce will facilitate global commerce and affect trade relations. At the present time, governments do not wish to stifle its growth, as businesses have only started to define the value proposition for the new technology. However, once these technologies reach a sustainable and substantial level of business transaction volume, national and local governments will impose taxable regulation.

The rapid dissemination of technologies such as the PC into corporate operations is also similar to the spread of windmills in the thirteenth century, in their ability to adapt to environmental conditions, or, in the case of the PC, changing business conditions. Like the windmill, the primary distinction of the PC was that it could be used when the computer mainframe was down due to failure of maintenance. The windmill offered a competitive advantage over the water wheel, which could be thwarted by simply going up stream and interrupting the water supply, or downstream and damming the river to raise the level of water to a height where the wheel no longer turned efficiently. The PC, although more expensive than a computer terminal, did not become useless during interruptions in the connection to a mainframe computer. In some cases, transactions were simply stockpiled locally on the PC and transmitted to the mainframe later. The important differentiator of windmill technology was its superiority over the water wheel, which froze in the winter months. PCs offered limited ‘detached capabilities’, and allowed orders, inventory movements and other production transactions to be recorded for processing when the mainframe was restored.

There is another parallel between PCs and windmills: the spread of windmills in the Mediterranean area was slower because the environmental conditions (such as freezing) were less prevalent. Likewise, the spread of PCs occurred at different rates in firms due to corporate cultures and progressed at even slower rates across industry sectors such as manufacturing, banking and retail goods. Organizations that were knowledge worker intensive rapidly adopted PCs, while the adoption by manufacturing operations occurred slowly over a longer period of time.

The adoption of the PC can be attributed to its availability to basic business functions and its adaptation to industry-specific tasks. Contrary to the medieval windmills’ adaptability to a large variety of tasks, the PC’s diversified abilities were often retarded by a technology organization’s desire to exert control over the PC by reducing cost, by standardizing on single hardware and software platforms. Technology organizations moved to limit the number of vendors that could supply a firm by discouraging the purchase of PCs by business units. Technology organizations faced with rising costs moved to adopt technological standards, originally focusing on merely buying equipment and software from a single vendor. This purchasing philosophy was challenged by business users as PC technology offered a wide variety of solutions, often from many sources. Organizations then developed hardware or software policies that shifted their specific vendors to interconductivity standards of operations. This shift resulted in the acquisition of suites of products that were specific business solutions and limited their ability to integrate into a comprehensive business framework. These loosely coupled software packages presented a new challenge, that of integrating dissimilar hardware and software components in which data and information became the commodity of exchange between business units and other parts of the organizational hierarchy. In this commoditization of information, technology groups once again strived for standardization of information in the form of data models and focused on providing a stable and dependable infrastructure to facilitate widespread data exchange. However, while these centralized efforts of standardization were taking place, PCs ushered in a change in popular culture, stressing individualism (that is, personal) and offering higher degrees of personalization. These two contrasting computing philosophies resulted in heated tensions between users in the business units and the technology organizations that provided centralized computer support services. This same type of conflict in operating philosophies can be witnessed today as firms providing products and services in global mass markets strive to commoditize their offerings into a ‘one size fits all’ solution for customers, regardless of culture.

Cultural Adaptation

Twentieth-century business often disregarded the diverse needs of individuals from varying geographies and attempted to provide a generic technology solution to all problems for all people. The idiosyncratic factors that are indigenous to a geographic region, cultural preferences or religious doctrines are often overlooked in many of today’s eCommerce, banking and retail product strategies. For example, few western banking software companies offer comprehensive Islamic banking applications. The opportunity for twenty-first-century businesses is to develop value propositions that leverage the cultural and behavioural differences in the world’s regions. This is done by assessing the relationship between technology and the people it serves. Organizations need to think global when planning and implementing technology infrastructures in order to achieve their goal, such as economies of scale. However, they must act local when applying technology directly at the point of interaction between the firm’s business processes and their customers in order to become flexible to market conditions. That said, technology’s true value proposition gives a firm the ability to use a common infrastructure, allowing the recasting of technology as a behavioural choice to become an essential component of the mass customization to a market of one. Especially at the local level, when dealing with a wide variety of disparate cultures, a technology’s value proposition must be clear and concise, not abstract. The relationship between culture and technology’s value proposition is explored on Chapter 4.

In cases when a technology has a clear and desirable value proposition, the rate of adoption is primarily driven by the communication of the benefits. Communicating how a technology is used, and the subsequent benefits to be gained, is closely linked to the language associated with its components. It is harder to disseminate the benefits of a technology until the general population understands the words used to describe it. Prior to the nineteenth century, communications were governed by time and distance. Technologies such as the telegraph and, later, the telephone, revolutionized communications which resulted in the elimination of time and distance as people could learn of world events as they were unfolding. However, when these technologies were first introduced, disseminating the benefits of technology was a dramatically slower process than today.

Looking back once again at the medieval world, communication was a slow process when compared to modern standards. Considering the rapid adoption of windmill technology in the late twelfth century, communicating its benefits and its resulting use was much faster than its incorporation into the popular lexicon. However, Lynn White observes that: ‘By 1319 at latest the windmill was familiar enough in Italy to permit Dante to use it as a metaphor in describing Satan threshing his arms “come un molin che il vento gira [like a windmill that the wind spins]”.’^[16] In contrast, computer jargon and Internet terminology have become part of the mainstream language within a generation, and incorporated into languages in all corners of the world.

Reaching all corners of the globe, terms such as Internet, ASP, WAP (wireless application protocol), mobile banking, dot-com and broadband are crossing linguistic and national boundaries and are being absorbed into local languages by technology-based knowledge workers and consumers influenced by the media, such as television and the Internet. In parallel, when it comes to communicating the benefits of technology, the process of adaptation is closely linked to the application of the technology to a wide variety of uses.

Technological Adaptation

Similar to the transformation experienced by contemporary technologies such as the Internet, during the course of the thirteenth century we see the evolution of windmill technology and its adaptation to a broader range of uses. The windmill’s original focus was to grind grain. Over a short period its applicability to other manual tasks was realized and it was adapted to a wide range of activities, such as fulling of cloth, tanning, laundering, sawing, crushing ore and olives, operating furnace bellows, manipulating forge hammers, rotating grindstones, reducing pigments for paint, pulp for paper and mash for beer.^[17] Likewise, the Internet is being adapted to the needs of a global society through a rapid evolutionary process. The Internet was originally designed for simple communication between military and academic communities, and it has now been embraced by business as a valid medium for conducting the transactions that enable commerce. With business activities such as selling directly to customers through the integration of complete supply chains, the technologies that plug into the Internet are rapidly defining how society will adopt the new capabilities that the new technologies present.

The Internet evolution will continue beyond the simple application as a means of conducting business. It will transform the very nature of what it means to be in business. Ultimately, the Internet will be embraced by the average citizen who will use it as a mechanism for saving time. The value proposition for Internet technologies is convenience, timeliness and cost savings. Even though the average person has now embraced the concept of the Internet and greater numbers of people are using it, few people have assessed the impact of the Internet on their everyday lives. Merely having a large percentage of a population using the Internet does not constitute adoption or adaptation of a technology to everyday life. When the technology instils in the population a sense of trust stemming from a sustained level of reliability, security and availability, people will alter their lifestyles and integrate the Internet into the activities of living. Citizens of the United States have reached a mature state of adoption with the automobile where the activities of society are now structured around automotive technology. For example, a non-driving suburban citizen is limited – almost thwarted – in any attempts to participate in social activities because of immobility. This is due to the fact that the automotive technology shaped the construction of communities and the distances between them; in Europe, on the other hand, the transportation infrastructure enables people to travel even to smaller towns via trains and buses. One could argue that Europe’s comprehensive transportation infrastructure provides its citizens with more freedom and mobility by offering a convenient alternative to air transportation or automobiles.

The next evolution of Internet technology will not be one of awareness, it will be one of applicability. In time, Internet technology will be assimilated into such activities as voting, bringing about a host of government transactions allowing the average citizen more direct participation in national, state and local government. Moreover, the Internet’s ability to facilitate communication will be used as a mechanism to bring parents and children closer together in a disconnected social world. The Internet offers parents a new opportunity to participate actively in the education of their children by creating a three-way communication between teacher, student and parent. Most teachers will agree that the use of technology generally stimulates a positive learning environment. However, the use of the

Internet should be considered as a component or tool to use in the larger educational context, defined by sound instructional theory. Parents can coordinate their efforts with teachers to ensure that the focus of computer learning is not simply to learn how to use hardware and software, but also to develop critical thinking skills to solve problems. Unquestionably, technology can facilitate students in unearthing answers, being an important tool in the education process.

Parents often struggle with how to get involved with children and technology other than by acting as a shield against pornography and other unsuitable subjects. Simply creating a dialogue with teachers provides a realm of opportunities for parents to engage technologies and supplement the relationship with their children. For example, your knowledge of the Internet and a subject such as medieval history surpasses your 12-year-old child’s level of knowledge. It would be easy, although time consuming, to spend a few moments organizing an Internet-based treasure hunt in which your child has to find specific things on a list of websites that you have preselected, or to help him or her do the research for their homework. This type of proactiveness may take an hour or two of your time, but you now know which websites your child is looking at and you are providing a structure that will help a child to learn responsible navigation through the Internet. A simple axiom might be that technology is not a stand-alone substitute for basic parenting; however, it can become a convenient excuse for bad parenting. A more distinct view is expressed by Neil Postman, who goes right to the heart of the issues:

In introducing the personal computer to the classroom, we shall be breaking a four-hundred year-old truce between the gregariousness and openness fostered by orality and the introspection and isolation fostered by the printed word. Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility … Print stresses individualized learning, competition, and personal autonomy. Over four centuries, teachers, while emphasizing print, have allowed orality its place in the classroom, and have therefore achieved a kind of pedagogical peace between these two forms of learning, so that what is valuable in each can be maximized. Now comes the computer, carrying anew the banner of private learning and individual problem-solving. Will the widespread use of computers in the classroom defeat once and for all the claims of communal speech? Will the computer raise egocentrism to the status of a virtue?^[18]

Individuals who have experienced ‘the work at home’ syndrome may agree with Postman in the one criticism echoed by many people who perform distance work using technology to telecommute: isolation. Telecommuters who experience this feeling of isolation are indeed maintaining the same or greater volume of communications using technologies such as eMail, video conferencing and collaboration software; however, they still desire physical human interaction. The interchange that occurs between colleagues before, during and after a meeting and the conversations conducted at lunch or non-meeting times act as a fertile ground for the exchange of ideas and the refinement of an organization’s culture. In this perception of detachment from the social aspects of work felt by adults engaged in distance work, one could argue that children who spend increasing amounts of time on the Internet as a substitute for playing outside run the risk of not developing the necessary social and interpersonal skills required later in life for a career. One of the dangers for the new generation is the rising number of children being taught at home. Fearing violence at school and negative interaction with other children, parents believe that they have the necessary skills to educate their children in arts, languages and maths, relying on the Internet to supply the missing elements of the children’s education. The problem with this could hardly be more obvious: not only does home teaching lead to isolation and the underdevelopment of children’s social skills, but also to the use of unreliable sources. Anyone who has done research on the Internet lately has realized that there is an immense amount of nonsense available to everyone, sometimes with encouraging icons and a very professional look. The relationship between technology and parenting and its role in elevating moral and social values are discussed in greater detail in section 5.4.

The Military Advancement of Technology

As in today’s society, the advancement of military technology had an impact on the direction of technological development during the Middle Ages. Military technological progress was very slow in influencing the average peasant, if there was any influence at all. However, advances in military technology that resulted from travel to distant lands did influence architecture, weaponry, political relationships of feudal lords and the upper levels of the social structure. Military technology is often the product of applying technology under adverse conditions to produce a breakthrough in how and for what a technology can be used. Military technology often finds its ultimate use in everyday society long after its primary military application to gain a strategic or tactical advantage over an enemy.

One of the earliest medieval technologies to present these attributes was the simple stirrup, and it can be used to show a parallel with modern start-up companies such as the dot-com. Originating in China many centuries before its appearance in Europe, the stirrup was a technology that revolutionized warfare. Used by Muslims in the Holy Land and later in the seventh century by Eastern Germanic tribes, the stirrup changed the very nature of how warfare was conducted. By the eleventh century, the stirrup in one form or another was in use by most of Europe and England. However, the military advantage of stirrup technology was not understood equally by all armies of the day. The principal advantage of the stirrup in combat was that it allowed the mounted rider to transfer both the energy found in his thrust of a weapon with the velocity created by the movement of the horse. This combined thrust was converted into a devastating blow against an opponent. This mechanical advantage made possible by the stirrup was not fully understood by the Anglo-Saxons’ leader Harold, when he fought William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. Although both armies were equipped with stirrup technology, Harold’s army dismounted to conduct the battle in the traditional manner (on foot), thus creating a Germanic overlapping shield wall which resulted in their defeat.^[19] Although Harold’s army had the stirrup technology, they did not apply it to a new battle strategy, that is, they did not adopt it into their strategic thinking. Although both medieval armies were equipped with the same technology, the advantage was to the one who rapidly incorporated technology into a strategic advantage by its tactical application. Similarly, many businesses are using the Internet as a mechanism for facilitating sales, but have yet to embrace it in their strategic business thinking. This behaviour is still exhibited by large venerable corporations and contributed to the development of new market entrants, such as Amazon.com with its ability to redefine the way in which people look for and acquire books.

Typically, organizations often purchase technology to engage the competition on a level playing field, and then use it in the same way as previous technologies. For example, look at the number of times a firm implements a new order entry system over a 20-year period without redesigning the fundamental order-taking process. Like Harold at Hastings – using the new stirrup technology with seventh-century tactics – many long-established Fortune 500 businesses have been engaged in a similar battle with the Internet and its integrated suite of technologies. At first, the industry scoffed at the Internet as an unproven and unsafe medium which lacked security and was not suitable for interactions with technology-illiterate consumers. However, businesses soon became painfully aware of the application of the technology as new competitors appeared literally overnight. These competitors were not fettered with bureaucratic business processes and ‘slow to change’ legacy systems. The nimble start-up companies captured significant numbers of customers while the big corporations first went into a denial phase, dismissing the start-ups as unprofitable. When start-ups did not disappear, big business moved into a ‘hurry and catch up’ mode which continues today.

It is clear that, over time, many technologies have been driven by military applications first, later finding use in everyday society. From the military campaigns of the Crusades to the Cold War, products such as ARPAnet, which was the beginning of the Internet, will continue to be assimilated by society. The military objective of technology is to anticipate scenarios and extreme conditions in order to develop countermeasures which will thwart or subdue an opposing force. The commercialization of military ingenuity is becoming a goal of governments eager to discover new sources of revenue without compromising national security. One such example by a European government involves adapting battlefield software that assesses and prioritizes incoming missiles to act as a predictive indicator assessing the daily changes in equities on the stock market. Fund managers, like battlefield commanders, would be able to analyse the rates at which stocks rise and fall and speculate based on projected movements. Businesses operating in the global economy must regard technology in the same light, and use it to anticipate future scenarios of competition and proactively engage technology to retain a competitive advantage. The role of new technology is to provide capabilities enabling an organization to expect changes in the business environment and rapidly deploy new capabilities.

Facilitating Commerce

Building and construction technology is another example of the continuous improvement in both technology and its application. In the Middle Ages, the construction of a cathedral progressed over a long period, often accelerating and slowing with the availability or lack of funding. Some churches started their construction in the western end of the church, and worked towards the east (altar end). Other builders started at the eastern end and worked towards a great window in the west wall. Whether medieval builders consciously or subconsciously knew that the technology for windows would improve over the years, permitting larger windows and thinner walls to allow the maximum amount of light into the structure, is not readily documented. Medieval builders employed a method of trial and error,^[20] but all with the same expressed value proposition to pilgrims and the congregation, that is, to create a space that would be expansive in appearance, filled with light to produce the presence of God. The grandeur of the structure, its iconography and imagery acted as the brand identity, advertising and guaranteeing future revenues from pilgrims and acting as a central hub for medieval commerce.

Over the past 20 years, the evolution of computer software application development, more specifically graphical user interfaces (GUIs), such as Microsoft Windows, has been similar to the evolution of a medieval cathedral’s window technology. Like the windows in a cathedral, the end-user interface has been a primary focus of the Internet’s adoption, because it enjoys the most visible connective point between people and machines. Software developers know that all aspects of technology will continue to advance at an ever-increasing rate. Windows technology, the most visual element seen by end-users, has been the easiest component of a technological solution because it can be demonstrated visually. Back-office systems and infrastructure – which may have a series of blinking lights on a control panel – do not offer the same visual stimulation as observing a software application which can plot the latest stock price movements. Both components are required to achieve the end result. However, the end-user mechanism is often the easiest to justify with sources of funding within the business simply because it is often used exclusively in the business unit. Oddly, the less visible component has the higher effective value because it can be applied to many tasks and in most cases outlives the initial application program on the end-user delivery technology.

^[6]R. Bacon. De secretis operibus, c. 4 (c. 1260), as cited in L. White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962) p. 134.

^[7]A. Koyr , Du Monde Clos l’Univers Infini (Paris: Gallimard, 1962) pp. 98–102.

^[8]P. Israel, Edison: A Life of Invention (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998) p. 423.

^[9]J. Gimpel, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (London: Pimlico, 1998) p. viii.

^[10]T. A. Stewart, Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations (London: Nicholas Brealey, 1998) p. 85.

^[11]R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1981) p. 148.

^[12]J. DiVanna, Redefining Financial Services: The New Renaissance in Value Propositions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) pp. 37–8.

^[13]R. S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) p. 40.

^[14]L. White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962) p. 87.

^[15]P. Jaffe, Regesta pontificum romanorum (Leipzig, 1888), no. 17,620, to Archdeacon Betrand of Dol in Brittany, in L. White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962) p. 88.

^[16]L. White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962) p. 88.

^[17]Ibid.

^[18]N. Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage, 1993) pp. 16–19.

^[19]W. G. Collingwood, Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age (Lampeter: Llanerch, 1989, [1927]) p. 172.

^[20]D. Knoop and G. Jones, The Mediaeval Mason: An Economic History of English Stone Building in the Later Middles Ages and Early Modern Times (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1949) p. 79.