Technology, techniques and three facets

Technology is the study of the systematic application of techniques, devices, implements, knowledge, and materials–collectively called tools–to alter the conditions of human existence.

For example

"Teknh " or techne is the GREEK word from which technique or tool is derived. Generally it meant any skill in doing, or a professional competence in executing some means of creating useful and beautiful objects based on a knowledge of materials.

Derived from tekton, techne literally means to join or to fit together. Carpenters used to join two pieces of wood together by dovetailing two parts to one another or by fitting together the mortise with the tenon (as seen here).

A mortise and tenon joinery

One section was the inverse of the other so the protruding portion fit snugly into the recessed portion. As with weaving or joining two things together, there are both artistic and sexual overtones to the word Tekne -- Tekton. Both inferences are conjoined because tekne refers to the performance done with some artistry and the process of creating something new from joining pieces or parts together, are implied by the use of techne; hence the French and English word technique.

Simply: technology is the study of how tools, devices, instruments, and parts fit together in a functionally organized whole for the accomplishment of specific tasks or goals.

On an apparent or formal level, technology is the study of how we use of tools to solve problems.

But beneath the surface, as an underlying characteristic, technology is also a mesh of tools–
a web of crafted material relations–that we use to manage the world. The above photo of
Los Angeles suggests the extent to which the scale of modern technology dominates landscapes.

Literacy

Technological literacy involves the ability of students to understand how knowledge, ideas, institutions, people, and behavioral norms work together to characterize the ETHOS of a culture.

Here the water diversion of the Inca in Peru manifests the central role of water in their social reliance on intensive agriculture. While the growing of potatoes, corn and beans was strategically essential to the success of the Inca, they did not employ a water wheel as was done in Asia, to lift water from a lower to a higher level.

Tools are not merely amoral instruments that facilitate culture, but are expressions of a social psychology and an individual gestalt. For that reason it is important to understand what a culture cherishes. That is to say, what do members of a society do that is rewarded? How does that differ from what is punished, banned or restricted? Those rewards and punishments will reveal the characteristics that any culture reveres and those traits it abhors.

For example, water lifting devices had to be maintained in African and Asian cultures whereas water channeling technologies thrived in the Andes. While geography dictated to some extent what tools were employed, rewarding craftsmen in maintaining these essential devices for water conveyance revealed the character of a mountain society based on root and grass crops, while desert peoples needed to lift water and rice crops in Asia were a demanding, though nutritious flood dependent form of agriculture.

Thus understanding the ethos affords a better understanding of how technology conveys human desires to order the world. Ethology with respect to how tools are used also reveals a desire to liberate forces to accomplish work. In the west especially, but originally in China and the Near East, technology was used to master, wind and water, or the otherwise unobtainable energy of falling water, or wind, or electricity in places where these natural forces were readily apparent.

Because of the complexity of the tools used to build water mills and wind mills, these devices formed a sophisticated tool complex. The future development of hydraulic based tools and the mill wright as a practice eventually led to engineering which is still is applied today to serve socially approved and desirable ends such as sanitation and pumps.

Tools are complex because their meaning can be understood to have three dimensions

Understanding cause and effect is complicated:

The purpose of anything according to Aristotle was its TELEOS; the end, goal, or meaning of an action, person, place, or thing. The purpose of technology is to bring about a desired outcome, or to replace existing conditions with a different set devices and tools to solve problems.

By understanding all of the causes of events it is easier to examine the complexity of human motivations. Of these reasons why events occur as they do, the immediate and underlying causes are important. They are clues that lead to particularly the ultimate cause for actions. The ultimate or end purpose of some process, intrigued Aristotle.

Believing we lived in a rational universe, Aristotle described four causes for all events. These are:
	The formal cause: wind moves the mill's arms. The proximate (or immediate) cause: air pressure shifts & moves winds. The underlying cause: warm air rises as it's molecules expand moving apart. Teleological (after teleos) cause: the purpose or end result to which events strive.

He was impressed by his study of embryological development in humans and animals. Thus he concluded that the formal, immediate, and underlying causes for change in people and things was the outward, persistent and current expression of some deeper and hidden facet of change that moved toward some end. That end point he called the teleos.

Aristotle's approach suggests that all tools, technology, and artifacts possess a purpose. Pursell refer to this as intentional use of apparatus to create a desired outcome, end, or effect.

Since the Greeks, the twin purposes of art and artificial creations were to combine both use and beauty. These twin values are cherished in western culture, but not often joined. Uses are often attributed to natural or ecologically valuable things we create when craftspeople combined physical or biological ingredients with human skill, imagination, and ingenuity to create an artifact, or a work of art, science, engineering, architecture, or construction.

Tool use requires, practical dexterity, application of forethought to solving problems for which the artifacts, devices, or utensils are designed, and some ultimate goal or purpose of the ultimate end to which these instruments or engineering are directed; but guided by our ethos, ethics and beliefs.

Two Cultures.

A threefold conceptual framework for describing technology involves:

Tools themselves

form and function

System for using

devices, instruments, utensils,

in an organizational context.

Cultural values of society

action, contemplation, subjugation,

control, or accumulation of wealth

All three facets of technology are necessary to describe the three-fold power of techniques and technical proficiency in our personal and collective lives.

Planes	facets	influences
Technical	Formal	and functional
Organizational	Systemic	and behavioral
Cultural	Symbolic	and ethological

The above planes intersect at the personal level like three dimensions in a room define the space available for activity to take place in the room; these relations arise from the personal and the social capacity of tools to shape the world of their user and the user as the technology is used.

Technology's relations form a matrix of potential inventions and tool complexes.

Be able to apply our definition, the etymology and the three aspects, facets or dimensions of technology to any tool , tool complex of set of technical arrangements you read about.

How to think about the complexity of any tool use and technology.
	aspects	facets	dimensions
tool	what it does ?	how it is used ?	extent it shapes our behavior ?
tool complex	related to ?	who controls the parts ?	organizes actions ?
technical arrangements	consequences ?	pervasive influences ?	recreates our world ?

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku

Science diagram | Science as rarified knowledge

Writing | Interviews | Free Writing

Last Updated on 12 September 2005, and 25 May 2010 and 27 August, 2012.