Technology
Overview
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tool
s, machine
s, techniques, craft
s, system
s or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ; . The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include construction technology, medical technology, and information technology.
Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species' ability to control and adapt to their natural environments.
Tool
A tool is a device that can be used to produce an item or achieve a task, but that is not consumed in the process. Informally the word is also used to describe a procedure or process with a specific purpose. Tools that are used in particular fields or activities may have different designations such...
s, machine
Machine
A machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...
s, techniques, craft
Craft
A craft is a branch of a profession that requires some particular kind of skilled work. In historical sense, particularly as pertinent to the Medieval history and earlier, the term is usually applied towards people occupied in small-scale production of goods.-Development from the past until...
s, system
System
System is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole....
s or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ; . The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include construction technology, medical technology, and information technology.
Technologies significantly affect human as well as other animal species' ability to control and adapt to their natural environments.
Unanswered Questions
Discussions
Quotations
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
Technology and the machine resurrected San Francisco while Pompeii still slept in her ashes.
Silas Bent, Machine Made Man, p. 326. (1930)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry Into The Limits of the Possible (1962; revised 1973)
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), ch. 5