The Ongoing Technological System

We start from the analysis of a powerful current of innovation of the last twenty years, these years 1995 to today, era of the "convergence" giving new products like mobile phone, networks and especially internet. This dynamic is also based on the mastery of genetics and new materials, while environmental constraints are beginning to profoundly change technological paradigms.

We use the concepts of technological systems, born in the 1980s, with tools for analyzing the structure of the organization of technology, its dynamics of evolution, and the transitions between its phases. These instruments enable us to characterize the historical technological systems, to model the specific dynamics and the modalities of transition.

This analysis will open up the question of the continuity of the contemporary technological system, of its capacity to regenerate itself under environmental constraint. The alternative may be a new technological revolution with the introduction of a new bundle of generic technologies to cope with the constraints and challenges of our current development.