It doesn't seem obvious to me that "The implicit assumption that good technologies should solve problems is everywhere" or "Technologies as solutions to problems is the dominant framework for thinking about them."
Who are the people you're responding to, who supposedly put too much emphasis on technologies as solutions to problems?
I'll try to compile specific examples and update the piece, but people who frame technologies as solving problems range from historians of technology like Mokyr (`a problem was defined jointly by a perceived market need and by the state of the art as defined by previous inventions and accumulation of knowledge`) to VCs/startup people where the dominant pitch deck goes "problem, solution, ..."
I'm coming at Mokyr as a complete outsider so I may be lacking important context, but...
His definition of "problem"--a word that he even puts in scare quotes--seems at odds with your use of the word to mean "bad stuff". Consulting a dictionary, I find the second definition of "problem": "Physics & Mathematics[:] an inquiry starting from given conditions to investigate or demonstrate a fact, result, or law." I think engineers and economists also tend to pick up this mathematical usage and often use "problem" to mean any sort of challenge or even opportunity.
I have often thought that invention is the mother of necessity, more often than not. Example: When I was young, no one "needed" a smartphone--they didn't exist. But once they're invented and become widespread, everyone feels that they can't spend a minute apart from a smartphone.
It doesn't seem obvious to me that "The implicit assumption that good technologies should solve problems is everywhere" or "Technologies as solutions to problems is the dominant framework for thinking about them."
Who are the people you're responding to, who supposedly put too much emphasis on technologies as solutions to problems?
I'll try to compile specific examples and update the piece, but people who frame technologies as solving problems range from historians of technology like Mokyr (`a problem was defined jointly by a perceived market need and by the state of the art as defined by previous inventions and accumulation of knowledge`) to VCs/startup people where the dominant pitch deck goes "problem, solution, ..."
I'm coming at Mokyr as a complete outsider so I may be lacking important context, but...
His definition of "problem"--a word that he even puts in scare quotes--seems at odds with your use of the word to mean "bad stuff". Consulting a dictionary, I find the second definition of "problem": "Physics & Mathematics[:] an inquiry starting from given conditions to investigate or demonstrate a fact, result, or law." I think engineers and economists also tend to pick up this mathematical usage and often use "problem" to mean any sort of challenge or even opportunity.
I have often thought that invention is the mother of necessity, more often than not. Example: When I was young, no one "needed" a smartphone--they didn't exist. But once they're invented and become widespread, everyone feels that they can't spend a minute apart from a smartphone.