Technology has brought us a comfortable life and endless wealth, and has also achieved economic prosperity. In short, our world has changed because of technology.

But what is the essence of technology? How has it evolved? These questions have left us pondering.

We find that technology is somewhat similar to music. We have all seen the scores composed by composers, and we recognize each note within them. But if someone asks what music is, and where each note that constitutes the entire music comes from, that becomes a very profound philosophical question.

The theory of increasing returns suggests that technologies that develop first often have a first-mover advantage, then reduce unit costs through economies of scale, and leverage learning effects caused by widespread popularity and the coordination effects generated by many agents adopting the same technology, making that technology increasingly popular in the market. People also believe it will become more popular, thus achieving a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle for that technology.

The 'positive feedback mechanism' caused by the 'law of increasing returns' can lead to the path dependency where the strong become stronger and the weak become weaker. The QWERTY layout of computer keyboards is an example; although this layout is not the most efficient, it dominates the market.

Through in-depth research, we conclude that the development of science and the economy is driven by technology, whereas we typically think in reverse. In fact, the need for humanity to solve problems is the driving force behind people's recombination of existing technologies, thus promoting the emergence of new generations of technologies. Like living organisms, all new technologies are 'combinatorial evolutions' of existing technologies.