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dif erentiation and selection, and to changing technology and economic structures.
Third, EEG attempts to analyse the changing composition of i rms and sectors, inl u-
enced by various innovations of scientii c, technological, institutional and organisational
nature. Fourth, and i nally, it emphasises the continuous process of adaptive behaviour
of economic actors, like i rms, when the 'environment' changes, for instance when tech-
nology, markets, locations and institutions change. For EEG it is important to consider
the question of how i rms, sectors, cities and regions adapt to new opportunities and
barriers to growth. Long-term changes in spatial patterns can be related to pervasive
technologies and to the l exibility of economic systems to adapt to the new challenges.
Evolutionary approaches are not restricted to gradual changes, they can also cover
longer time-horizons and structural changes of economic, technological and spatial pat-
terns (Boschma, 1994; Lambooy, 1984; North, 1990, 1994; van der Knaap, 1978; van
Duijn and Lambooy, 1982; Wenting and Boschma, 2006).
This chapter is necessarily selective, and it is not the place to discuss in depth the
theoretical dif erences among authors who investigate nature of the inl uence of scientii c
development on technological development. Some authors emphasise the gradual devel-
opment, whereas others emphasise the inl uence of revolutionary structural changes
over longer time-horizons. We refer to Anderson et al. (1988), Cohen (1994, 2007),
Mokyr (2002) and Hellyer (2003) where this issue is discussed, in particular with regard
to the inl uence of the scientii c revolution on technology and economic development.
However, here the focus is on the views of the interrelations of waves of new technology
on long-term economic development and on spatial patterns.
In section 4 the issue of the development patterns of the economy (endogenous,
gradual, cyclical, or exogenous and in phases) is explored with the theories of 'long
waves' (Kondratief , 1926; van Duijn, 1983) and of 'phases in the development'
(Maddison, 1991).
In this chapter three concepts are used to investigate the various phenomena associ-
ated with the developments of technology, economy and spatial structures. The i rst one
is the concept of
general purpose technology
(GPT). This can be used to investigate the
development of pervasive technologies. A GPT is a set of technologies that is pervasive
to all economic production and consumption. Lipsey et al. (2005, pp. 12-13) describe
GPTs as follows:
They begin as fairly crude technologies with a limited number of uses and they evolve into much
more complex technologies with dramatic increases in the range of their use across the economy
and in the range of economic outputs that they help to produce. As they dif use through the
economy, their ei ciency is steadily improved. As mature technologies, they are used for a
number of dif erent purposes, and have many complementarities in the sense of cooperating
with many other technologies.
As such, a GPT can be seen as a basis for new waves of improving productivity (Dosi,
1982; Dosi et al., 1988; van Duijn and Lambooy, 1982). A GPT can be investigated in
various ways. For our purpose, a selection is made on the basis of the impact on spatial
patterns. It can be argued that the impacts of GPTs have been extremely important for
both space and economic development. Our society and our spatial coni gurations have
been completely altered by the various GPTs, more in particular by those that were the
basis of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century. The most recent wave of
