The Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences (AIRESS) will organize a workshop on problem solving in the learning, invention, and evolution of technologies, led by Professor Mathieu Charbonneau, on Friday, May 2nd, starting at 9 a.m.

ABSTRACT:

Technology is an inherited system of knowledge, skills, techniques, and artefacts that is adaptive and open-ended. It is adaptive because it provides solutions that help us solve problems, some of which have major impacts on our lives. It is open-ended as it seems capable of continuously increasing in complexity, diversity, and efficiency over historical time. From a cultural evolutionary perspective, technological change is thought of in terms of a cumulative process whereby populations effectively transmit technological solutions and explore ways to incrementally improve and accumulate them over time. However, this focus on solutions makes strong assumptions about the problem spaces explored by individuals and populations, and less attention is paid to the range of problem-solving activities that take part within the cumulative process. The goal of the workshop is to provide a closer look at the nature and role of the problem-solving activities that shape problem spaces, and how a focus on problem-solving provides new grounds to understand the learning, invention, and evolution of technologies.