“Unlike resources found in nature, technology is a man-made resource whose abundance can be continuously increased and whose importance in determining the world's future is also increasing”.
C. Starr and R. Rudman

Technological change builds (non-linearly) on previous experience and knowledge and can thus exhibit increasing returns - the more you learn, the more you know.

Improvements in costs of photovoltaic cells in Japan as a function of cumulative expenditures in R&D as well as manufacturing and niche market applications ("learning by doing", “learning by using”). Research in this area is done in cooperation with Chihiro Watanabe at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. For further information, see a recent TNT paper; for the data in electronic form, see: data and data description.