Ruling the Waves

Essay on Spar's Ruling the Waves

After finishing this book, I immediately thought to myself, "finally!" To explain, the book was not a very fun and entertaining read by any means. At times I found myself reading a couple pages just to get myself tired and ready for bed. However I did feel that this book was very educational and brought up some great points and ideas. Written by Debora Spar, a Harvard professor, I found myself struggling through some chapters simply because of the vocabulary and advanced ideas that she proposed. For example, when she explained the four phase model, I found some of that to be a little confusing because I initially had a hard time relating her four phases to today's technologies or industries. It wasn't until I was finished with the book was I able to put it all together and I usually have a hard time understand books like that. All in all, the book is very intelligent, but you can tell that she did not write this for the sake of entertainment. It is a great read for this class, as it is very obvious how her book applies to what we are studying.

Spar claims that with technology developing as often as it does, there are four sequential phases that typically occur. The first is the innovation phase, which is a technology's invention and initial development. The second is commercialization, or the introduction of the technology to the mainstream. The third phase is that of creative anarchy, when there are conflicts over issues of ownership, rights, standardization, and competition. Finally, the fourth phase is the rules. Theses are the where the legal structures are defined, and of course, enforced. She begins to apply these phases to several communication technologies from the printing press to the internet. It is through these four phases that I took the most from this reading because she basically is saying that we can go through history up to now and relate these phases to all the major technological innovations that we have encountered. This is extremely important because she is saying that there is a certain predictability that comes with the development of a new technology. This enables people to look at the past trends and apply successful ideas that have been proven to be successful.

Spar also makes the point of how many technological innovations now threaten the power and control of the government, but she says that the government is able to withstand this by supplying "the property rights that entrepreneurs eventually want, the legal stability that commerce craves, and the stability that society demands" (Spar).

It is the innovators that are also at high risk of losing their product to "pirates" that steal the new technology for their own profit. That being said, there is obviously a need for rules to be implemented to govern technology.

Another significant argument occurs when she discusses the point where everyone begins to understand the importance of rules and how an absence of them can greatly affect their own well being. The irony here is that many people initially rejected them. "Without rules, and particularly without rules of property and exchange, markets simply do not grow." That point really stood out to me because holds true in virtually every market, and even any institution that is in existence. We hate to follow rules, but we all understand the absolute need for them. The third phase of creative anarchy is where this mostly applies. This is where the certain technology is maturing and the innovators understand the need for order.

The patterns of technological development that Spar describes