Explaining institutional technology
评述并扩展了Koppl等人(2023)的技术演化组合理论，提出将修补机制纳入用户创新理论，聚焦制度技术以解释演化层次跃迁和数字经济，并尝试从技术解释推广到知识解释。
This paper offers a review and several refinements and extensions of Explaining Technology , by Koppl et al. (2023), which develops a combinatorial theory of the evolution of technology. First, we suggest that the mechanism of tinkering can be formulated in the theory of user innovation. Second, we propose that a useful refinement is to focus on institutional technologies. This offers a better explanation of emergent levels of evolutionary selection, or major transitions, and also adapts their framework to better explain the nature of a digital economy. Third, we propose a more ambitious line of generalisation from explaining technology to explaining knowledge. We suggest this is possible from the rubric of the new ‘physics of information’ in constructor theory, assembly theory and Bayesian mechanics.