Technology

Technology is the use of tools to ‘get things done’ more easily than using our bare hands and bare brain

Introduction – Technology

Technology is the use of tools to ‘get things done’ more easily than simply using our bare hands or bare brains.^[1] Technologies are cultural creations that are superimposed on our natural biological abilities: that is, they may be learned and transmitted to succeeding generations for further development.  Physical tools can be as simple as a hammer, or as complicated as a computer. Mental tools can be as simple as an idea, or as complicated as language or mathematics. All forms of collective learning that may be recorded or passed on by word of mouth are mental technologies that have the potential to change, and preferably improve, human existence.

Technological changes can rapidly transform societies so technology is a key concept associated with economic aspects of social organization including agriculture, medicine, mining & manufacture, transport & communication, trade & commerce, engineering & construction, computing & information technology. It is a form of culturally transmitted knowledge that has generated an exponential acceleration in social complexity associated with industrialization, urbanization, and globalization culminating in an explosion of discoveries over the last 250 years as each technological novelty built cumulatively on the discoveries of its predecessors.

The power of technology has increased as its ‘machines’ have taken advantage of increasingly concentrated and processed forms of energy: fire, wind, water, human muscle-power,  muscles of domesticated animals, coal, petrol, oil, electricity, nuclear power as we head into the new era of Informatia based on renewable forms of energy.

Physical tools

The potential impact of technology on human existence is immediately evident when we see history divided into Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages.

In 1800 there were no bicycles, cars, planes, trains, steamships, telegraph, telephones, electric lights, refrigerators, or computers – which makes those times very different from our own. In our times computers and biotechnology have transformed the world.

Technology changes lives by increasing our capacity for ‘getting things done’, for ‘doing work’. The history of technology is therefore closely linked to our ability to not only use the available energy more efficiently, but to access energy in new and more concentrated forms.

Historically, technology was used by one culture to dominate another, most notably in the development of superior armaments. Today, although new technological developments are protected by intellectual property rights, there is much more international sharing of life-enhancing technology.

Mental tools

Collective learning is tribal wisdom as culturally accumulated knowledge: shared information that is passed from generation to generation. Cultural information exists as memes[2] that may be as simple as transmitted practical facts, or as complicated as innately comprehended body language and mental tools like language and mathematics. Historically the rate of accumulation of collective knowledge has accelerated exponentially through time facilitated, in part, by increasingly sophisticated technology.

Classes of technology

Modern complex, urbanized, and globalized human societies depend today on entire classes of technology, among the most familiar being:

environment of evolutionary adaptation (inc. diet, spaces)

mining & manufacture (energy use, processing)

transport & communication

trade & commerce

engineering & construction, agriculture, computing & information technology, medicine

population & productivity (group size, urbanization, globalization)

values, norms, attitudes, beliefs, administration

transport, communication, mining, and manufacture.

Among the technologies we associate with communication are writing and alphabets, printing, telegraph, telephone, radio, film, television, the internet etc.

Transport systems include: domesticated animals, shipping, automobiles, aircraft etc.

Technology timeline