PATENTED TECHNOLOGY AS A MODEL SYSTEM FOR CULTURAL EVOLUTION

In this chapter, I argue that the study of cultural evolution would benefit from model systems that are analogous to the model organisms studied in biology and that patented technology would make an excellent model system. My argument has three main steps. First, I note an important epistemic benefit provided by model organisms in biology: knowledge about a model organism illuminates nonmodel organisms both by providing a baseline for comparison with nonmodels and by allowing us to extrapolate knowledge about the model to similar nonmodel organisms. Model organisms are often relatively easy to learn about and understand, so information about the model organisms accumulates from many perspectives, and this information becomes increasingly integrated over time. Second, I argue that the analog of model organisms, which we can refer to as model cultural systems, provides analogous epistemic benefits for the study of cultural evolution. Or, at least, a model cultural system would provide those epistemic benefits if it existed. Third, I argue that patented technology has all the hallmarks of an excellent model system for at least three important aspects of cultural evolution: the way traits flow in the hyperparental genealogies that are characteristic of cultural evolution, the openended innovation characteristic of many cultural systems, and the new automated methods and tools for mining huge digital data sets to visualize and quantify the evolution of cultural traits. Patented technology nicely illustrates these three aspects of cultural evolution and provides a relatively easy way to learn more about all three. Although the standard methodologies for investigating cultural evolution do not include things like model organisms in biology, this is an unfortunate 6