What Is Technology?
What Is Technology?
Both in our personal and professional life, technology play a bigger and bigger role. In addition to those who conduct research, develop, and implement new technologies, understanding how people shape technology and how it influences people's interactions with one another and the natural world is crucial for all individuals and organisations that must use those technologies in both their personal and professional lives.
Words like "technology" are not neutral. Depending on their point of view and the situation, various people will interpret it differently.
“Technology concerns itself with understanding how knowledge is creatively applied to organised tasks involving people and machines that meet sustainable goals.”
There are three crucial components to consider in this definition:
1st Component:-
- As opposed to science's primary objective of merely comprehending the workings of the natural world, technology focuses on taking action to address human needs.
- The desire to investigate the microscopic world, which was beyond the scope of our unaided vision, led to the development of the microscope.
- As a result of this technological solution to a long-standing issue, we now have a better understanding of how the world functions, which has sparked the development of further technologies.
2st Component:-
- It uses far more than just scientific information, emphasising values over facts and actual skill over academic understanding.
- The iPod is an illustration of how inventive design and the laws of physics can combine to create an iconic must have accessory.
3st Component:-
- It involves systematic methods of operation. It covers the interactions between products (machines, devices, artefacts) and the systems and individuals who create, utilise, or are otherwise impacted by them through various processes.
- A lot of individuals enjoy drinking coffee, frequently in a coffee shop. Although the coffee may have come from trees that were engineered expressly for higher yields that would support a small farmer and his family, doing so necessitates the use of pesticides that were created and produced in another nation.
- The collected coffee beans will be shipped around the world to be processed and packaged before being supplied to coffee shops, who will then brew the coffee in a specially made polystyrene cup.
Origin of Technology:-
Technology derived from the characteristics of how people behave and, in its earliest forms, is directly tied to the origin of man. It was first and foremost life-focused, and only afterwards was it work-focused.
According to L. Mumford, technique with a focus on power and output developed much later.
The scientist B. Porshnev also proposed another novel idea in technology. He held that the impersonal aspects of human adaptability to the outside world are what give origin to technology.
So a person is compelled to employ stones and sticks, which are thought of as intermediaries:
- Early versions of modern technological instruments, in place of teeth and claws. This particular variant appears to demand special consideration.
- The ambition of man to transcend the bounds of his nature and organisation, to expand the impact of natural organs on matter and forces of nature, is the primary driver behind the development of technology.
- In other words, the conflict between the physical structure of man and the requirement to alter nature in order to produce the materials needed for his survival and development has evolved into the primary source.
The purpose of technology's continued advancement is to allow humans to have a greater impact on the environment while continually offloading labor-intensive tasks onto technological gadgets. The ensuing ideas are crucial to the philosophy of technology.
Technological Development Periods:-
The Era of Manual Technology:-
- The primary tools in this age were those for manual labor—tools that reinforced and continued to develop the physical capacities of natural human organs while labour was done by hand.
- The subject and their competent labour force controlled the primary production processes.
The stage of Mechanization and Machines:-
- At this point, machinery serves as the primary driving force behind manufacturing, with humans acting as its appendage. Here, labour is already automated.
- Industrial society and technogenic civilization both develop during this time.
The Era of Automation:-
It is clear that the task is mechanised in this situation.
Approximately in the second part of the 20th century, this started. In this situation, the machines essentially replace people in terms of active engagement in manufacturing, taking them out of direct production.
The employee in this scenario acts as an organiser, controller, and "manager," and rather than their physical abilities, their intellectual brilliance, technological know-how, and cultural and technical contributions become significant.