And Martin explains the non -evolution of the Japanese sword over a period of 700 years in terms of lack of theoretical understanding of the factors affecting the blade's properties, and the high cost of constructing prototypes. All of which suggests that increases in the level of technological opportunity depend on both increases in the level of theoretical understanding, and decreases in the costs of constructing and experimenting with prototypes. Recent advances in molecular biology illustrate the former mechanism, and in computer-based simulation technology the latter. It also raises questions about how best to conceptualize how prototypes are constructed. Certainly not to a model in the mechanistic sense.
Technological change is, above all, a social phenomenon.
As such, its categories and their interactions are too imprecise and contextual to be represented realistically by a computable algorithm. Indeed, the same holds true for any evolutionary system. A mathematical simulation of its contingent, path-dependent behaviour can never be true to life. The Innovator s Dilemma. Harvard University Press.