"Hydraulic lock-in"

["Ricardo Duchesne" <rduchesn@xxxxxxxx>]

Before I point to those passages in Elvin (1993) where he
elaborates what he means by "hydraulic lock-in", I should state
where my analysis is likely to differ from his. Elvin's conception of
"lock-in" is similar to the technological lock-in problem that is the
subject of much current debate in policy analysis of innovation and
product design. Lock-in involves a situation in once a particular
technological path is taken, the barriers to switching may be too
expensive eventhough there is another path available which is
superior. A recent example of  technological lock-in was the take
over of VHS over Beta tapes. Although Beta was technically
superior, we were locked-in with VHS tapes because VHS arrived
in the markets in high volume earlier than Beta, and as there were
more and more VHS tapes and players, it was easier and less
costly to make new tapes in the format that would fit most of the
players than to try to maintain multiple formats. This was a self-
reinforcing process in a positive growth feedback,  which is what
made it a lock-in. There are many other examples. A classic one is
the QWERTY key board, which was developed in 1873 as a way of
solving the problem of jamming keys on typewriters. By spacing
out the most used letters, typing was slowed down to lessen this
jamming. But today there is no reason to continue using this
keyboard as the electronic keys of our computers do not have this
problem. A better keyboard could be designed which would speed
up typing, but we retain the QWERTY board because changing it
would involve re-learning a whole new system which no one
company wants to risk being the first one to change.

Economists also refer to this problem as "path dependency" to
refer to cases in which markets cannot always be relied on to
produce the optimun technological/energy choices.

When Elvin writes about  China's traditional pattern of development
as a "form of pre-modern lock-in" he has in mind this concept of
"technological lock-in", which is the term he really uses except for
one instance where he says "hydraulic lock-in". My disagreement
with Elvin is I do not think the Chinese case can be classified as a
form of technological lock-in in the way that term is understood
today. China was locked into a particular pattern of development
due to the nature of the environment it relied on rather than the
technology it employed. I would also make a distinction between
the types of lock-in China faced in the northern wheat dry regions
and the southern wet-rice regions.