What makes technology so complex?

Thin

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lion
"Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." star

Background

Meaning

etymology of technology

origins of technical skills

 

myths & stories

 

periods

 

keystone inventions

 

Virtuosity

Connections

Edward Muybridge's photographs in sequenced succession.

Revolutions

 

Conclusions

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Understanding the order of things recreated by technology.

Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

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Depth of field

Deep Background

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Background

Technical things are complicated and ubiquitous:

What is technology?

cyclical synergistic relationships among people and things that generate a related complex of tools in order to perform work.

words

Etymology or the origins of any word's current meaning.

 

Combining
Greek Prefix
Greek Suffix
joinery
Technology
techno logy
roots Tekne =tekne + logos =
skill to bind or tie

+ the wisdom of

thought putting together pieces rationally + ratio, reason,
practice dovetailed joinery
a systematic study
creativity exaptation logically unrelated combinations

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Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

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Depth of field

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

 

The relation of tools, techniques, and human values that different people use and have applied in the past to intelligently solving problems based on craft, manufacturing, industrial, or electronic means.

Related words:

Greek Root:, skill derived from knowledge of materials.

root
derivation
meaning
related concepts
TEK architecture to join tectonic
logos logistical, logical logic log, logarithm

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Periods of technical changes:

Name Duration over time and character Consequences & associated ideas
lithic
• Upper Paleolithic or old stone age in Africa - Asia & Europe
craft language
hydric

• 10,000 years ago until 8th Cent BC -- Hydraulic Civilizations: China, India,Cambodia, Iraq & Egypt, Peru, irrigated agriculture

domestication & urbanization

agricultural

florescence

• 3d Cent BC to 6th Cent AD -- Ancient Han, Roman & Tang: foundations of art, architecture, music, & records

technical revolution & population explosion
Eotechnical
High Middle Ages; uses of wind & water
water wheels of fortune
windmills
Don Quixote & the giants
Arab transmittals: algebra -- alchemy
Paleotechnical
18th & 19th centuries; uses of coal & coke
factories & mines
steam engines
transportation revolution

Euro-imperialism: gunpowder & god

industrial

Neotechnical
19th & 20th centuries; uses of electricity
dynamo & telegraph
radio, radiation & electronics

American imperialism: commerce & imagery

atomic

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Lewis Mumford divided the recent development of technological civilizations into three phases based on their sources of power, materials used, and accomplishments:

Eotechnical, the early wind and water powered period before 1500, based on wood as a fuel and vegetation as materials
Paleotechnical, or the origins, dawn and dispersal of the industrial revolution based on coal as a fuel and minerals as materials
Neotechnical, the automation made possible by electrical machinery and based on oil as a fuel and synthetic materials & fabrics.

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Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

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Depth of field

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

 

A Feedback model is a necessity for understanding the power of tools and technology to transform society.

 

Synonyms for tools
tools

Any collection of related kinds of implements for a similar purpose is called a technological complex.

 

Thai hut interior
    • apparatus
    • appliances
    • artifacts
    • contrivances
    • devices
    • effects
    • fabrications
    • gadgets
    • hardware
    • implements
    • instruments
    • items
    • junk
    • kit & caboodle
    • machines
    • notions
    • software
    • utensils
    • weapons

Seen above is a domestic collection of metal pots, pans, buckets, kettle, baskets, and plastic jugs found in a home in a Thai village in the late 20th century.

 

 
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Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

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Depth of field

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

 

 

Deus Ex Machina

Deus ex machina literally means the "god from the machine." In the Greek tradition of dramatic arts, a deity would be lowered onto the stage at the end of the tragedy to rescue the protagonists from their hubris and self-imposed tragic end. The machinery used to lower the "god" onto the stage gave rise to a metaphor related to the mechanical intervention in human affairs to resolve a problem.

The spiral development of technical know how.spiral
wine press
electricity

Greek theatre

 
telegraph  
Greek temples Artemis
Railways 

Roman wine press

  Steam Engine

Chinese compass

Newcomen Engine

Medieval Monastery

Textile machinery
textile loom
Catholic church organs
Asian clocks
 

Mine drainage pumps


timing gears

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The coming of mechanization changed social relations as it had in the coming of agriculture.

Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

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Depth of field

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Social relations



The Labor Theory of Value


Especially in Paleolithic times, pastoral, and later agrarian cultures societies conceived of the worth of anything as determined by the time womens' workinvolved in the processing or manufacturing of materials to enhance survival, express emotions, or control behavior.

Value is determined by the duration that elapses as one prepares food, makes implements, or produces things.

The woman in the picture is seated on the floor spinning vegetable fiber (flowers that produce the lint fibre of cotton) into thread. Thread literally and figuratively is the product of a technical process, whereby the skill of the woman exercising a technique with a specialized tool creates a valued item to be used in the manufacture, repair and weaving of cloth. She wears cloth and has adapted (an example of exaptation) a bicycle's spokes and rim to replace the wooden spinning wheel that her ancestors used symbolsto convert fibers into usable thread.

 

The time it takes to transform a natural product (lint of the cotton plant or the wool of a lamb) to a necessary good, in this case cotton thread often determines the cost, price or worth of the yarn, or spun material. Spinning concentrates and thereby strengthens the endurance of the fibers making them useful in the weaving or sewing of cloth.

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Word definition synonymous meaning

labor
to bring forth a child out of the womb. Birth
  the gainful employment of those who work. Toil
  any craft or professional endeavor.
Vocation

Postman on the transformation of work, labor, and livelihoods.


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Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

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Depth of field

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

 

Socialization -- Technology shapes the world we see, feel, touch, taste & hear because it appeals to our senses and it organizes our labor around different means of accumulating wealth.

These five sensory experiences contribute to how and what we know to use tools.
Remember the only sure path through the maze of ingenuity is learning and knowledge.

Sensory experience influences our comprehension of the world.

Technological Imperative: change is inevitable, "get used to it."

 

Ways to think about technology.

the use of devices

dimensions of use economic factors synonyms social consequences
  technical
Land
nature
resource flows
   
*
the "garden," produce
technology organizational
Labor
work
craftsmanship
   
=
trade unionism
  cultural
Capital
symbols
wealth
        "know how"


Technocratic Elites: those who know keep you from knowing what you need to know -- hence are you lost?

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Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

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Depth of field

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

 


Technical Virtuosity

Means the ability of skilled crafts people to adapt and exapt existing tools to meet new imperatives.

When was Chinese technology dominant? 1100-1450.

What?

They created iron, paper, locks, compass, rudders, maps, gunpowder

&

used canals, astral clocks, rice, bamboo, tiles and clay fired ceramics

How?

The tool complex

Actually web of technological relations exists because of the way that materials and inventions are dependent on one another for effective tool making and implementation.

 
materials
 
higher efficiency
Fire
increase in skilled labor
ceramics, glass, metals
iron
novel reuse of old tools


agriculture

  growing surplus wealth
innovative techniques
 
Cycles of Change

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Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

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Depth of field

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

 

Cultural Values

Monet's painting of a canal.


Historical development of social mores or shifting social norms.

Mores period characteristics keystone
Sacred Prehistoric the cosmos is alive & reflects the image of God. Art & music
Material Ancient elements < earth-air-fire-water-wood > comprise all. Fire
Ethical Ancient people have an obligation to act with justice to others. Hunting
Commercial 1500s the market determines the worth of anything.

Locks & paper

Utilitarian 1600s the greatest good for the greatest number. Algebra
Romantic 1700s transcendent ideals bind humans to land & all life. Mechanization

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Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

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Depth of field

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

 

Triggers are catalysts -- or those key devices that cause behavior or that cause other technical things to change, thus altering behavior as their use becomes widespread.


They are the hinge on the door of the future.

Consider the use of or invention of: fire, plows, gears, gauges, cars all of which profoundly bolster our modern, automated, electronic world.

Depending on the context these catalysts are the ingredients in the quickening pace of change because they allow technological changes to diffuse widely and rapidly among cultures, often leading to social change and economic disturbance.

Triggers context consequences
seed protection gathering food, fiber, fuel & forage agriculture
Antikithera device sacred prognostication of planetary motion differential gears
gunpowder sacred observance, amusement & defensive strategy explosives & canons
steam engine the application of a vacuum cylinder to a boiler power for machinery
Camera capture a still image on a plate or film The Kinetoscopes and motion pictures or movies.
dynamo inducing a current in a magnetic field to flow as electrons electrical power

Can you determine the trigger, context and consequences for our current period of technological virtuosity?

Triggers ? What it's used for: consequences:
     

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Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

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Depth of field

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

 

What is the role of exaptation in the use of a key element from one technological complex to another?

 

Reasons why triggers may disperse widely and thus change social behavior and cultural customs:

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

Thus do new things (being in the saddle) confront our imaginations with continuous adaptive challenges?

 

There is no single reason for technological change, because inherent in the relation to tools, work and products is a synergy of forces that propel people, institutions, customs and culture from one period of technical sophistication to another quite different period. From one period to the next human reliance on nature is altered. Social adaptation is supplemented by keystone technologies that alter behavior, ideas, and living conditions because tools rock the hand that rocks the cradle.

 

Tools are neither good (Daedalean) nor bad (Promethean) but they do confront us with a devil's bargain (Faustian) every time we think we know more than we actually do about techniques, technical implements and the intelligence required to master our inventions.

Technology is an array of forces, triggers, and leverage points that we must learn to comprehend, if we are to understand what it is to be fully human.

Tools change us as technologies are altered over time.

Authors:

The Two Cultures

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| Postman–Tech | Postman–Television |

Related pages

book

 

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Meaning | past eras | Tools | Social | Change | Triggers | Culture

line

Depth of field

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

 

Index to the above page

definitions
aspects
formula
domestication
time and value
prehistory

To look behind and re-capping the details

Thematic appendix of basic ideas in the course:

  1. pastoral & agrarian values.
  2. Labor theory of value & chronometers.
  3. Things like flakes, arrows, fire, art, burial, weaving are all manifestations triggering tools from our earliest ancestors.
  4. The industrial command of mechanization and management
  5. Automated values.

 

Course overview of technological changes in history:


"Things are in the saddle and ride mankind."

Ralph Waldo Emerson's remark on the impacts of industrial technology on human relations, motivation, and mores in the 1800s.

what if we are unaware?

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contents of the site

triangleThree realms of technology or aspects of technical power.

book
Tulips as tools?
tulips
Tools of Toil: what to read.
Tools are historical building blocks of technology.
Technology can be understood if tools have three facets.
Tools used in both Music and Architecture led to mechanization and automation.
Tools and the study of technology require us to reflect on the power of instruments,

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