Disorderly Technology Development Comes with High Recovery Costs

We already know what happens when land and regional development become haphazard. Unnecessary facilities are built, roads and infrastructure become tangled, and eventually even more money is spent on restructuring and restoration.

Why should haphazard development be limited to construction? Technology can be developed haphazardly too.

Sometimes the solution to a problem is surprisingly simple. A thoughtfully and carefully designed core technology can create a short cut through a complex problem.

Yet in reality, people copy what others have created, rush to follow technologies simply because they are trending, or create detours around technologies that already exist. The reasons vary. New development projects may be created for self-interest, while additional technologies and systems are added to preserve existing roles and interests.

More technology does not mean technological progress.

When numerous detour technologies and systems are created to solve a single problem, and new technologies are then piled on top, the market environment becomes complicated. Money, time and focus are scattered in multiple directions, while the shortest route to solving the actual problem is pushed aside and technologies that look impressive on the surface begin to proliferate.

The bigger problem is that, just as restoring poorly developed land to its original state is costly, once technology enters markets and infrastructure, it is not easy to remove. Connected systems have to be dismantled or abandoned, regulations revised, duplicated investments sorted out, and markets redesigned.

We end up paying not only development costs, but also substantial recovery costs.

We need to think carefully about why a technology is needed and what problem it is intended to solve before developing it.

And if someone has already developed a core technology that can solve the problem through a shorter route, respecting that technology and ensuring that it is properly used may itself be genuine technological progress. Copying core technology, erasing its origin, presenting it as one’s own achievement, and using capital to capture the market first is not innovation. It is technology misappropriation, and it ultimately leads to the additional cost of technology disputes.

We have long been sensitive to haphazard land development. Now, let us look at ‘technology’.

“Are the many technologies we are building technologies that truly advance, or are we in the midst of ‘Disorderly Technology Development’?” — Suhyun Jeong, CEO, AllthatECO