Nothing more permanent than change: Or how to understand continuity in technological development

The calls for change are all around us. Modern society would need to dramatically shift to other production methods, other approaches to nature and environment, and new, improved regulations for economic activities. This paper does not challenge this need for more elegant production methods nor does it aim to criticize the importance of sustainability. What I will do, however, is question the concept of changing itself. More often than not, a need for change is accompanied with a claim of a paradigm shift actually already happening. I will argue that it is theoretically impossible to know whether one experiences a shift or not, as one would need to see in the future to actually proof the shift. With several examples from historical analysis, on management of river systems in the Netherlands and irrigation development in the Netherlands East Indies, this argument is sustained. It will become clear that pointing to actual shifts is not that straightforward, even when we know the outcome of the shift. There are clear changes to be detected in history, but when was the shift? Analysis of shifts will prove to be at least partly a function of the perceptions of the observer, the amount of time between the shift under study and the observer, and the length of the time frame applied in the analysis. Now being able to locate actual shifts may hamper, or at least leads to questions, about management of shifts in modern times.
Civil Engineering and Geosciences