ABSTRACT
The present and following chapters are concerned altogether with educing new hypotheses accounting for technological development. There are different ways in which a problem can be viewed, and sometimes it may be resolved more readily by using two or more approaches. A long-standing dual approach to social phenomena, and one that is applicable here, is independent analyses of function and structure. Functional analysis is applied in this chapter in studying the historical movement and interplay of technology's basic manifestations — its patterns of production. The next chapter will present an attempt to describe the underlying structure, or mechanics, which impart to an active technology its inner dynamic and tempo.
