Interpretation of the Diagram
Human knowledge does not simply grow: its carrier, depth, communal structure, and instrumental environment are transformed from one era to the next.
The logic of the diagram. The model does not present a linear history of progress but a set of interlocking adaptive cycles. Environmental, social, political, and demographic change generates problems; the community uses communication to build shared interpretation and a shared order of action; from this a knowledge package and a tool system emerge. Tools, however, are not neutral aids: they reorganize production, power, settlement patterns, population, and the knowledge needs of the next era...