Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

The Three Faces of Technological Disruption

Publication at Faculty of Social Sciences |
2021

Abstract

Long has been the history of socio-political changes brought by invention, development, and proliferation of technologies. However, not all of them can be labeled as disruptive because of the missing systemic layer of the impact.

Therefore, this paper will investigate the three forms of disruption, predominantly in military sphere. First, horizontal disruption or negating the existing system such as in revolution in military affairs (RMA), where appearance of the new artefacts (gunpowder, cavalry, artillery...) rendered obsolete their predecessors.

Second, vertical disruption or establishment of a new system is the process we can find in development of nuclear weapons that conditioned a brand new strategy and decision making mechanisms, as well as paradigm shifts in warfare as such. Third, deconstructive disruption as the most abstract concept means changing the underlying logic upon which we base our thinking about technological change.

Adequate technologies here are 3D printers and quantum computing that require an inherent doubt in the axiomatic foundations of our world such as Newtonian physics and Euclidian mathematics. Finally, this paper will put the three cases in comparative perspective to show how technological disruption functioned distinctively in different historical epochs.