Lifting the Hood of the Technological Evolution Process for Web Technologies

This article uses an evolutionary networking perspective to develop a Spiral Model of technological evolution for web technologies. This model is grounded in archival data concerning the creation and development of web browser and web search technologies (1994-2005). The Spiral Model posits that the evolutionary process for web technologies goes through four interconnected phases: network formation, network contest, blackboxing and dismantling the blackbox. The model highlights the role of technological frames that guide the inscription of artifacts and the enrollment of key actors and technologies into actor-networks. These actornetworks engage in contests as each seeks to impose its frame on the technology. Actors who are successful in this contest can begin to “blackbox” the web technology according to their technological frame. Yet this blackbox state is reversible, and is subject over time to both endogenous and exogenous triggers that may begin to dismantle these blackboxed technologies. This phase leads to another round of network formation and contestation. The result is an evertightening spiral of change in the two technologies.