HOMOCOUPLING OF TERMINAL ALKYNES 1 INTRODUCTION

BY self-augmentation, I mean the fact that everything occurs as if the technological system were growing by an internal, intrinsic force, without decisive human intervention. Naturally, this is not to say that man does not intervene or play a part; but rather, that he is caught in a milieu and in a process, which causes all his activities, even those apparently having no voluntary direction, to contribute to technological growth, whether or not he thinks about it, whether or not he wishes it. Self-augmentation signifies that technology represents a center of polarization for all twentieth-century mankind, and that technology feeds on everything that people can want, try, or dream. It transforms human acts into a technological factor; this is not self-creation, but the integration of the most diverse and seemingly most alien factors into the system, for its own benefit.

Self-augmentation thus encompasses two phenomena. On the one hand, technology has reached a point of evolution at which it keeps changing and progressing, with no decisive human intervention, by a kind of inner force, which compels it to grow and necessarily entails nonstop development.

On the other hand, all people in our time are so passionate about technology, so utterly shaped by it, so assured of its superiority, so engulfed in the technological environment, that they are all, without exception, oriented toward technological progress, all working toward it, no matter what their trade, each individual seeking the best way to use his instrument or perfect a method, a device, etc. Thus, technology progresses thanks to the efforts of all people (except for the nonintegrated nations of the third world and the very tiny number of antitechnological individuals in technological society).

The two phenomena are actually identical. First, man was

assimilated into the technological system, which, of course, develops only by human acts. These acts, however, are so precisely caused, determined, defined, summoned, elicited, that no one escapes and each individual's activity is ultimately integrated. The All and the Individual are identified. Since everybody is working in this direction, it is not the individual's small deed that counts, but rather the anonymous product, which is nothing but technological augmentation. This is self-augmentation because technology induces each person to act in this direction, and the result comes from an addition that no one deliberately, distinctly wanted. Man appears between the two as the necessary—albeit narrowly necessary—factor.

Twenty years ago, when I first pointed out that technology develops by a process I could describe as "self-augmentation," my idea was put down as

"mythical exaggeration" and "unfounded artifice.” But since then it has been more and more frequently taken up, accepted, and demonstrated. I will cite a few examples:

"Technological progress is virtually self-generating. We must no longer await future scientific discoveries from technology; it is technology itself which causes expansion in new discoveries and new dimensions"

(Diebold).

Karl Mannheim shows that technology causes by itself the planning, which extends to vaster and vaster areas of our life and which engenders and exacts technological progress. "We will no longer be capable of progress without planning, even in the cultural domain. . . . There is no asking the question of whether or not we prefer a planned society: we cannot escape it" (Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, 1967).

"It is thus essentially the discovery of functional synergies that characterizes progress in the development of the technological object. One must then ask if this discovery occurs at one swoop or continuously. As a reorganization of structures intervening in the functioning, it occurs suddenly, but it can pass through multiple successive phases" (Simondon). Once again, Simondon's profound analysis makes what he writes about the technological object applicable to technology in general.

Likewise, B. de Jouvenel, without mentioning self-augmentation, does point it out: "There is a difference in nature [between our civilization and all others] especially in that efficiency continually progresses: our civilization has a permanent revolution of procedures" (Arcadie, 1968).

"It is its own acquired speed that makes technology progress.

And there are two reasons for this. The first is that the traditional industries must be kept up . . . the second is nothing other than the fundamental law of technological civilization: `Anything that can be done will be done.' This is how progress applies new technologies and creates new industries without seeking to find out whether or not they are desirable" (see Dennis Gabor, Survivre au futur).

R. Richta too, incidentally, recognizes the principle of self-augmentation in technology; labeling it "self-development," he links it to the principle of automation. Where the production process remains broken down into independent cycles, automation of systems will only be partial.

Where a process of uninterrupted mass production occurs, we have complete automation: Hence, self-augmentation accelerates with the possibilities of automation. However, this self-augmentation, as Richta abundantly demonstrates, rests primarily on a capacity for research, a standby of scientific knowledge, permitting the constant application of more efficient technological solutions. Thus, the development of science and research is far more important in creating and reproducing social productive forces than the extension of direct production. This is Richta's decisive contribution to analyzing the system.

In clarifying this trait of self-augmentation, I do not deny the existence of the celebrated "process of decision.” De Jouvenel always insists on decision-making, which he sees at the origin of each technological development ("Situation des sciences sociales aux États-Units" in Analyse et prévision, 1968). A decision as such, he holds, is a social act. This statement is true. But it lacks two elements of analysis. First of all, the decision-maker is technicized man, preconditioned by technology. Then, the options are fixed exclusively by the technological field; the decision never bears on anything but the applicational validity of some innovation, which will or will not impose itself according to its technological value, efficiency, and, perhaps, profitability. The decision-making process is, in reality, integrated in the phenomenon of self-augmentation.

Donald A. Schon (Technology and Change, 1967) offers a useful analysis of the different stages in the process of technological growth:

invention, innovation, diffusion. He underlines a paramount aspect of self-augmentation, namely, that innovation and invention must be taken as facets of a single continuous process rather than as a series of actions coming before or after one another in time. He correctly rejects and refutes the "rational view of invention" (intentional, an intellectual, a goal-oriented process) in favor of a "process" that develops and ramifies incessantly

"thoughout the life of any new technology, with no precise beginning or end,"

and in which "need and technology mutually determine each other.” This analysis strikes me as remarkably exact and very different from the simplistic diagrams of the rational and finalist character of technological invention. Very generally, however, writers distinguish between "discovery" (which is more and more abandoned), "invention," and innovation.” For some, there is scientific invention and technological innovation. There is no "invention of the radio": there is only innovation by applying a scientific invention and combining previously existing technological elements.

Each technological advance is an innovation resulting from series of convergent inventions.¹ But observers try to distinguish several types of innovations and even (see Russo) the levels at which innovation takes place:

elementary technologies, technological units, industrial units (from the most simple to the most complex). And they distinguish the stages of innovation:

essential conception, new processes, the combining of old processes, the components of improvement that was affirmed by the intervention of diffusion.

We can then establish the following pattern (Daumas):

(a) essential conception (origin of conception, conditions of its realization, integration into the technological unity);

(b) tests and final adjustments;

(c) innovation (nature and relative importance of the problem to be solved-circumstances of the diffusion of the process, motivations, technological or economic difficulties of application);

(d) developments (improvements, adaptations, economic consequences).

M. Crozier (The Stalled Society) maintains that large-scale organization is an environment favorable to innovation. The latter, he says, is not an individual phenomenon determined by a strict economic rationality, it is a collective system whose success depends on human factors, and in this area, large-scale organization can be superior to the crowd of small producers.

And Crozier dwells at length on this collective aspect (both before and after innovation), which corresponds exactly to the idea of self-augmentation. In particular, if innovation depends on a certain individual liberty, it is probably more assured in large-scale organization than in a tiny business. Likewise, a large-scale organization can draw on greater resources to aid innovation.

And above all, it can anticipate This is the kind of analysis that can bring home what is covered by the

general term of innovation.

We must, in sum, realize that technological innovation does not exist per se. It responds to a certain number of needs (even though observers are more and more contesting their preexistence: needs depend on the technological object rather than vice versa). It occurs within the dynamics of a certain number of tensions (all kinds, but always relative to time), in relation to a certain socioeconomic milieu (favorable or unfavorable to this innovation) and finally in an overall technological context which can be receptive or prohibitive. It is the relationship of all the factors that allows concrete understanding of the technological development.

Thus, when considering a technological product, one can always

ascertain that it is only a combination of previous elements: there is no invention of television, or radio, or the automobile. The detached parts first appeared on the market and existed; and only on their basis was the final product possible. Some observers even go so far as to discard the very word innovation and speak only of "technological change.” But this seems rather hazy.

On the other hand, we certainly ought to go along with B. Gille ("Note sur le progrès technique," quoted by Daumas) in distinguishing several types of innovation: compensational, marginal, structural, overall.²

We are still left with the question of when, where, and why innovation takes place. The habitual Marxist answer is that innovation occurs in response to a rise in salaries. The employer is interested in replacing expensive manpower with machines. The introduction of new technologies results from higher pay, the effect of which is lower profits. Management must then try to bring down the aggregate of wages by introducing methods that save direct labor (automation of production). But as Beaune points out (La Technologie, 1972), "focusing exclusively on higher salaries, such as a certain British and American trade-unionism does, without appreciating the technological element in its own right, is playing capitalism's game.” Profit can be replenished only by innovation. Yet we are forced to recognize that this simple explanation does not clear up everything. For, after all, a specific domain does not necessarily have to have "labor-saving innovations"

available: The opposite can be proved all too easily!³ In reality, even when concretely examining the phenomena of innovation, we perceive that there is no necessary and generalizable correlation, but only an accidental one.

the possible consequences: "The capacity for innovation grows with the ability to control the unfavorable effects that one might await from innovation."

Thus the growth in size of social and economic units seems to furnish a favorable milieu for innovation. Organizing more and more coworkers is the condition for innovation. Hence, what I wrote in 1950 is now confirmed: Self-augmentation is the participation of everyone in the technological work. "The activity and efficiency of the technicians do not stop growing with their number [It is in the numeral growth of the protagonists] that the cause of spectacular achievements may be found. . . . Each technician taken separately is no more gifted . . . than those who preceded him. A hundred men studying the same problem in the same time span obtain greater results than one man devoted to the same work a hundred times longer. Furthermore, the progress of technologies has been its own stimulus. . . . It has continually created more improved means favorable to its own acceleration.”⁴

Therefore, only the big firms can meet the conditions of this growth, by coordinating the research of technician teams—so that, as Furia excellently points out, "research is even more concentrated than production.” These firms try to appeal more and more to the young, even the untrained, in order to get them to enter the process. Hence, there is really a tendency to integrate everyone into research, at least potentially. A teeming of very tiny businesses is not favorable to self-augmentation. The latter requires a certain overlapping of each technological subsystem; technology takes its rate of growth as of a dimension that allows investments, unsuccessful experiments, unprofitable capitals during a certain period. Therefore, it is wrong to think that the concentration of businesses is due to technology but could be challenged, and that technology could be used for deconcentration. The truth is that concentration is not a consequence of, but a condition for the development of technology, for the phenomenon of self-augmentation. Thus, French chemistry stagnated so long as it was scattered. When Rhône-Poulenc absorbed Progil and took control of Péchiney-Saint-Gobain, this brought about not only economic equilibrium, but the possibility of technological development. The issue is not capitalist competition but the size of a subsystem that must be integrated in order to offer multiple possibilities of action.

Finally, the framework of big business (whether capitalist or socialist) will allow what strikes me as a fundamental aspect of innovation, what I will call essayisme—trial and error. Technologi-

cal innovation seldom results from mathematical reckoning; it continues to function on a level of trial and error. And this seems to quite specifically mark the technological mentality: Technicians test. Anything and everything. And we see what comes of it. It is not curiosity but rather an absence of certainty and deep-rootedness. "Why not this . . . ?" Here we have a general feature of our society. For the sake of innovation, religious, moral, and collective certainties must be done away with. Every individual is left with his experiences—why not do that? And amid thousands of errors, a lasting innovation comes about. But with technological innovation, we see the positive face of trial and error. Further on, we shall see what this means for man engulfed in the technological society.

In contrast, innovation seems limited by a strange phenomenon ascertained by Jouvenel: "The crafts that have progressed the least were those that could have improved the material lot of the majority.” So, Teissier du Cos: "The more an industry responds to a basic need, the less it innovates.” In other words, technological growth (i.e., innovation) occurs first in the areas of the superfluous, the useless, the gratuitous, the secondary.

And this seems to be generalizable. In the period of spontaneity, innovation was applied to things that did not respond to essential needs.

Thus, no innovation is in man's true interest. The obvious things we note today (more innovation for walking on the moon than for feeding people) have always been a trait of technological progress. And this confirms the trait of self-augmentation. It actually means that technological growth has taken place in terms of itself and by its own process, and that there has never been a clear human intentionality able to direct it. Man has never chosen to make innovations where they are really needful. They occurred in places where the technological system had in itself its reason for progressing. To be sure, with planning, men now claim to direct innovation; but actually, we realize that all planning is polarized in advance by the growth imperatives of the technological system, which completely ignores real needs (everyone everywhere is always bent on more turnpikes rather than quality food). And innovation, on the contrary, thanks to the minute analyses of these past few years, has been integrated into the process of self-augmentation. It is not the marvelous, dazzling sort of innovation that causes growth in this new domain, but rather the ipseity of this growth that defines innovation. The latter is comprised in the mechanism and takes place according to its needs.

An excellent (and involuntary!) example is given in Kaufmann's

book on invention (Kaufmann, Fusten, Drevet: L'Inventique, 1970). It refers to "creative methods" whose development responds to the needs of the society. Businesses have to keep inventing constantly—every executive, every engineer has to be a discoverer. The mechanisms of discovery can be analyzed, understood, hence reproduced and utilized. This study shows ways to grasp and elicit "intuition," including a climate of play and relaxation, recourse to "nonexperts" (indispensable catalysts!), the process of bisociation (bringing together two ideas or two technologies than can combine), "breaking down," playing with words, superimposing ideas and analogies, etc. The most complex combinatory methods are analyzed:

Molès's matrices of discovery, Zwicky's morphological research, etc.

All this perfectly demonstrates the integration of inventiveness in the technological system—invention is no longer the affair of a man who, left to the devices of his genius, discovers within his particular orientation the innovation that excites him. Invention now results from a set of procedures and manipulations, and it comes about by a sort of collective mobilization (experts and nonexperts), inevitably on a very low level—i.e., it is always a product inherent in the logic of previous growth. It cannot escape it. Hence, innovation is utterly domesticated. There is no conflict at all between innovation as a triumphant act of the individual and the blind self-augmentation of a system; the system has perfectly assimilated, gained control of, and integrated the innovation. There is no growth unless there are innovations, but these result more and more from applying technologies to technological areas that correspond exactly to the necessity of self-augmentation—without our being able to discern the least independent, intractable, or forensic factor.

Of course, this self-augmentation does not signify a lack of very deliberate and voluntary reflection of research on this growth. The remarkable "Post Apollo Program—directions for the future" is quite specific in this regard. This is the programming of research for continuing the NASA work after the political "slam on the brakes" (February 1970). The report selects the basic choices for doing research and pursuing operations. It is thus a very explicit effort, such as is furnished, incidentally, in many sectors of the technological world. And yet, even here, one can speak of self-augmentation because this project is situated within the technological system, which involves that growth. Everything in this report is open to question, everything is reconsidered, except the obviousness of

continuation and progression. The authors of the report were moved by the need to pursue this development, hence they took part in a self-augmentation that made this development both obvious and necessary. The only thing that had to be achieved was research along the most judicious road, the choice of polyvalent vehicles, etc. All these things are issues raised only in terms of a self-augmentation of the system.

Massenet perfectly expresses this self-conditioned technological

Massenet perfectly expresses this self-conditioned technological