Technology is the application of knowledge for achieving practical goals in a reproducible
way. The word technology can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both
tangible tools such as utensils or machines, and intangible ones such as software.
Technology affects almost every aspect of 21st century life, from transport efficiency
and safety to access to food and healthcare, socialization and productivity. The power of
the internet has enabled global communities to form, and ideas and resources to be shared
more easily.
There are three important aspects to this definition:
1. Technology is about taking action to meet a human need rather than merely
understanding the workings of the natural world, which is the goal of science. The
invention of the microscope was driven by a need to explore the world of the small,
beyond our unaided vision. This technological solution to a long standing problem has in
turn enabled us to understand more the workings of the world which in turn has led to
the development of more technologies.
2. It uses much more than scientific knowledge and includes values as much as facts,
practical craft knowledge as much as theoretical knowledge. The iPod is an example of
where the physics of making a small device carry so much music is married with
creative design to make an iconic must have accessory.
3. It involves organized ways of doing things. It covers the intended and unintended
interactions between products (machines, devices, artifacts) and the people and
systems who make them, use them or are affected by them through various processes.
Many people like to drink coffee, often in a coffee shop. That coffee may have come
from trees which have been bred specifically for increased yields that support a small
farmer and his family but that requires pesticides that were developed and
manufactured in another country. The harvested coffee beans will themselves be
transported around the world, to be processed and placed in packages which are
distributed to shops that then make the cup of coffee in a polystyrene cup that was
manufactured for the purpose but which then needs to disposed of and so on. Every
choice we make relies on, and feeds, a highly interdependent and far reaching way of
life where some have much and some have little.
Technology is a hands-on, can-do profession where people have to be skilled in many
of the following: engineering, communicating, designing, developing, innovating,
managing, manufacturing, modelling, and systems thinking. But technology also gives
us various products which can be used for good or ill or where the benefits are disputed
and similarly the processes involved in producing and using technology means that we
should all take an interest in whether it provides us and everyone else with a
sustainable future.