what is relevant to economic history is not the inventing but the #adoption and #use. For several decades, many historians, even economic historians, have focused their attention overwhelmingly upon one aspect of the question of technical progress: "Who did it first?".... Such questions are, indeed, important to the history of #invention. Much less attention, however, if any at all, has been accorded to the rate at which new technologies have been adopted and embedded in the productive process. Indeed the diffusion process has often been assumed out of existence [original emphasis].

《FROM INNOVATION TO USE: TEN ECLECTIC THESES ON THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF TECHNOLOGY》

🔰 #DAVID_EDGERTON

@PhilosophyCafe ♨️