ICT 300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: A Black Box
19 Nov 2018
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Document Summary
A black box is a device which is viewed solely in terms of its input and output, without any knowledge of its internal workings. Black boxing is the way that scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a scientific fact is settled, one need only focus on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become. As judged by the number of patents filed, the vast majority of inventive work today is collaborative and done within a formal institutional context (not a garage) Lone inventors are more likely to have useless inventions (as judged by patent citations) Isolated inventors are less effective than social inventors at culling out the bad ideas. Diversity in the collaboration helps the elimination process. Extended networks are important and can increase the chance of having breakthrough ideas.
