ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
Major transitions in information technology.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Digital Interventions for Managing Medication and Health Care Service Delivery in West Africa: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Pooled it
- A smartphone analogy to explore the origin of animals.The EMBO journal · 2026Review
- Opening strategies in the game of go from feudalism to superhuman AI.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- A cultural evolutionary theory that explains both gradual and punctuated change.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- The cultural transmission of tacit knowledge.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Evolution of Brains and Computers: The Roads Not Taken.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Evolving complexity: how tinkering shapes cells, software and ecological networks.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Storage of Information and Its Implications for Human Development: A Dialectic Approach.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Open-ended cumulative cultural evolution of Hollywood film crews.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- The Beneficial Role of Mobility for the Emergence of Innovation.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- The major synthetic evolutionary transitions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When looking at the history of technology, we can see that all inventions are not of equal importance. Only a few technologies have the potential to start a new branching series (specifically, by increasing diversity), have a lasting impact in human life and ultimately became turning points. Technological transitions correspond to times and places in the past when a large number of novel artefact forms or behaviours appeared together or in rapid succession. Why does that happen? Is technological change continuous and gradual or does it occur in sudden leaps and bounds? The evolution of information technology (IT) allows for a quantitative and theoretical approach to technological transitions. The value of information systems experiences sudden changes (i) when we learn how to use this technology, (ii) when we accumulate a large amount of information, and (iii) when communities of practice create and exchange free information. The coexistence between gradual improvements and discontinuous technological change is a consequence of the asymmetric relationship between complexity and hardware and software. Using a cultural evolution approach, we suggest that sudden changes in the organization of ITs depend on the high costs of maintaining and transmitting reliable information.This article is part of the themed issue 'The major synthetic evolutionary transitions'.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.