Technology and Biological Evolution: What This Means for Media and Communications Technologies

What if our efforts of developing communications technology followed a hidden script written by evolution? New thinking suggests that that might just be the case. Coming out of a PhD research project looking at networked forms of media, specifically p2p networks, this talk looks at the research findings which show a strong correlation between the cycles of technology development and evolutionary theory we normally associate with biology. This talk looks at how generational changes in technology development fall into patterns akin to natural selection and then expands this point to help us to understand how the process of change impacts on the whole process of technology. What impacts will that have for future development of communications technology?