Proposition 6.2: if a skill-enhancing technological innovation creates an externality, it is necessarily a positive technological disruption.

A skill-enhancing technological innovation is created by its proprietor in the wish to obtain a private or social benefit. As long as the benefits related to its skill-enhancement function are conferred only to the proprietor, no significant socio-economic disruption takes place. However, if the innovation creates an external benefit that is related to its skill-enhancing function, then the benefit-seeking proprietor transfers the innovation gain to the collective, therefore creating an external benefit thus a positive technological disruption. For example, as a technological innovation an online encyclopedia (such as Wikipedia) does not create a technological disruption when used only by the proprietor of the technological artifact, but it creates a positive technological disruption to users of the technology who have their intellectual skills enhanced by it.

https://doi.org/10.36227/techrxiv.24542293.v3