Although it is generally agreed in the social sciences that technology plays
an important role in the economy, it is also recognized that it is difficult
to understand what this role is and how to conceptualize it. Economists
have traditionally treated technology as an exogenous factor and a black
box. So-called growth theory has succeeded in endogenizing technology
but has made little progress in developing a concrete and empirical type
of analysis. Though economists inspired by Joseph Schumpeter have, in
recent decades, developed the influential ‘‘economics of innovation’’
(Rosenberg 1994; Dosi 2000; Freeman 1982; Nelson and Winter 1982;
McKelvey 2000), this approach does not, by and large, open the black box
of technology, and it fails to engage with the increasingly sophisticated
analyses of technology coming from history and sociology of technology.
Bringing economy and technology together in one coherent analysis that
is both analytically interesting and empirically oriented is, therefore, still
very much on the agenda of the social sciences.