This book is a collection of works regarding the interactions of science, technology, and society.

The interrelations of science and technology as an object of study seem to have drawn the attention of a number of disciplines: the history of both science and technology, sociology, economics and economic history, and even the philosophy of science. The question that comes to mind is whether the phenomenon itself is new or if advances in the disciplines involved account for this novel interest, or, in fact, if both are intercon nected. When the editors set out to plan this volume, their more or less explicit conviction was that the relationship of science and technology did reveal a new configuration and that the disciplines concerned with 1tS analysis failed at least in part to deal with the change because of conceptual and methodological preconceptions. To say this does not imply a verdict on the insufficiency of one and the superiority of any other one disciplinary approach. Rather, the situation is much more complex. In economics, for example, the interest in the relationship between science and technology is deeply influenced by the theoretical problem of accounting for the factors of economic growth. The primary concern is with technology and the problem is whether the market induces technological advances or whether they induce new demands that explain the subsequent diffusion of new technologies. Science is generally considered to be an exogenous factor not directly subject to market forces and, therefore, appears to be of no interest.

In this provocative and broad-ranging work, the authors argue that the ways in which knowledge - scientific, social and cultural - is produced are undergoing fundamental changes at the end of the twentieth century. They claim that these changes mark a distinct shift into a new mode of knowledge production which is replacing or reforming established institutions, disciplines, practices and policies. Identifying features of the new mode of knowledge production - reflexivity, transdisciplinarity, heterogeneity - the authors show how these features connect with the changing role of knowledge in social relations. While the knowledge produced by research and development in science and technology is accorded central concern, the

This volume intends to give an insight into progress in the field of studies on modern science and technology. Researchers from Sweden, Japan and Germany began a "three country comparative study" in 1984. One of the primary aims of this study group was to better take account of the increasing importance of Japan in both analytical work and technology policy. To this end, researchers from the Research Policy Institute (RPI) at the University of Lund, the Graduate School of Policy Science at Saitama University in Urawa, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Karlsruhe met almost every year with policy makers from the three countries, in order to see how well the scientific debate is reflected in the interests of practitioneers in the related policies. The cooperation with the Swedish Board for Technical Development (STU)!, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (Monbusho), and the German Federal Ministry for Research and Technology (BMFT) brought about numerous "grey" papers, publications and two volumes of seminar proceedings. The first book2 deals with the problems of measuring technological change and summarizes tentative research plans from our first meetings. I concluded then, in November 1986, that "quantitative results are to be checked in a qualitative discursive process with the involved people. ( . . . ) The interaction of various indicators raises the pressure of argument and credibility. Case studies in dynamic fields of technology ideally supplement quantitative approaches.

Best known as the leading historian of French railways, François Caron has also done significant work on topics as varied as electricity, water and steam power, the theory of innovation, the structure of enterprise, and other aspects of economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this volume, he brings together these different facets of his expertise in order to present a broad panorama of modern technology. Caron shows how artisanal know-how was adapted, expanded, and formalized during the three industrial revolutions that swept over Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States in a comprehensive analysis of this long, complex, and continuous historical process, leading up to the twenty-first century. Thus, he illustrates the increasingly fruitful interaction between technological and scientific knowledge in modern times.

While science and technology research, sources of funding, performance, incentives, and motivations for technology innovation activities are reasonably well understood by academics and policy makers, the complex process by which scientific results are exploited and transformed into new technologies through an innovation process is poorly documented and studied little. Technology Dynamics is dedicated to the complex activity of technology innovation, with the aim of describing how innovative ideas are generated and their transformation into new technologies. It is based on the idea that technology evolves continuously with time, is changed by innovations, and is characterized by a dynamic that is constituted by technological processes occurring in organizational structures, as well as during the use of technologies. The five chapters Discuss technological processes for innovation; Describe innovation within organizational structures; Offer information on interfacing of science and economic factors with technology; Suggest new statistical studies for innovation and new approaches for innovation policies; and Examine the contribution of technology dynamics to statistical studies and promotion of technology innovation. This book is aimed at managers developing strategies for technology innovation, researchers interested in exploiting scientific results for innovative ideas and new technologies, scholars and students studying the economics of innovation. The book would also of interest to private or public financiers of innovation and policy makers involved in economic growth strategy.

This book deals with methods to evaluate scientific productivity. In the book statistical methods, deterministic and stochastic models and numerous indexes are discussed that will help the reader to understand the nonlinear science dynamics and to be able to develop or construct systems for appropriate evaluation of research productivity and management of research groups and organizations. The dynamics of science structures and systems is complex, and the evaluation of research productivity requires a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and measures. The book has three parts. The first part is devoted to mathematical models describing the importance of science for economic growth and systems for the evaluation of research organizations of different size. The second part contains descriptions and discussions of numerous indexes for the evaluation of the productivity of researchers and groups of researchers of different size (up to the comparison of research productivities of research communities of nations). Part three contains discussions of non-Gaussian laws connected to scientific productivity and presents various deterministic and stochastic models of science dynamics and research productivity. The book shows that many famous fat tail distributions as well as many deterministic and stochastic models and processes, which are well known from physics, theory of extreme events or population dynamics, occur also in the description of dynamics of scientific systems and in the description of the characteristics of research productivity. This is not a surprise as scientific systems are nonlinear, open and dissipative.

This self-contained book systematically explores the statistical dynamics on and of complex networks having relevance across a large number of scientific disciplines. The theories related to complex networks are increasingly being used by researchers for their usefulness in harnessing the most difficult problems of a particular discipline. The book is a collection of surveys and cutting-edge research contributions exploring the interdisciplinary relationship of dynamics on and of complex networks. Topics covered include complex networks found in nature—genetic pathways, ecological networks, linguistic systems, and social systems—as well as man-made systems such as the World Wide Web and peer-to-peer networks. The contributed chapters in this volume are intended to promote cross-fertilization in several research areas, and will be valuable to newcomers in the field, experienced researchers, practitioners, and graduate students interested in systems exhibiting an underlying complex network structure in disciplines such as computer science, biology, statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics, linguistics, and the social sciences.

Emerging business models, value configurations, and information technologies interact over time to create competitive advantage. Modern information technology has to be studied, understood, and applied along the time dimension of months and years, where changes are the rule. Such changes created by interactions between business elements and resources are very well suited for system dynamics modeling. Business Dynamics in Information Technology presents business-technology alignment processes, business-technology interaction processes, and business-technology decision processes, serving the purpose of helping the reader study information technology from a dynamic, rather than a static, perspective. By introducing two simple tools from system dynamic modeling - causal loops and reference modes - the dynamic perspective will become important to both students and practitioners in the future.