Technology is not an endless circuit of material things flowing out of inventions, tools, and laboratories into a life, it is the very fabric of the life we are living.

A study of any tool and the techniques we acquire to use them–thus technical understanding–begins with a story.

Steam Engine above

Component sketch of a double acting steam engine

A summary statement by Heather Lechtman.

Where are we going next?


	Remember
		Clarify
	Understand
		Organize
	Apply
		Reflect
	Analyze
		Examine
	Evaluate

	Create

Read the books carefully and make notes:

"It is a complex story that scientists are now constructing out of contributions (of many specialists)....The story hopes to explain how human beings came to have tools and the significance of that development. But there are many ways to explaining this."

Carroll Pursell, White Heat. p. 29.

• First week: stories about tools and technology. How tools do what?
• Second week: defining what technology is doing to us all.
• Third week: Despotic demands of hydraulic technology and fear.
• Fourth week: How people use tools as systemic technical implements.
• Fifth week: What allows tools to do what they do?
• Sixth week: The synergy of mechanisms that converged as automation.
• Seventh to tenth week debates: C. P. Snow's Two Cultures & your choices.
• Eleventh week: New industrialism and the power of emergent properties.
• Twelfth week: Three revolutions driving the present QED transformation.

• Week One: the story of Thamus

• Week Two: Pursell question and the story of Prometheus

Pursell starts with the three facets of technology as the extension of human expression.

• Week Three:

Arnold Pacey opens with the Asian origins of inventions, designs, complexes and ideas.

• Week Four:

Neil Postman takes his cue from European transformation of Asian designs & devices.

The significance and quality of the conversational dialog that is essential for technology use & transfer

Weeks

A learning objective for these weekly readings is for participants to talk about several ways to define technology by writing about explicit examples of five to ten devices that have altered economic, social, and political relations in the past.

CORE:

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

Authors: a brief index of technology authorities and writers used, or quoted and foot noted on this web site.

Technology index landscape index words index map index photograph index

Dictionary | Vocabulary | Advanced Vocabulary | Words | fact vs fiction | Rare words | theme vs thesis | antonyms | dialectic | obscure words

Indexes: | Science | Population | Genetics | Global Warming | Nature | Darwin | Technology | Site Analysis | Brief | Cases

Clarify

Technology is any sufficient knowledge of materials necessary to assemble or put things together properly in order to function effectively in achieving a desired outcome.

What do we mean specifically by technology?

Are artifacts evidence of technology?

How is technology defined precisely, or exactly?

When were important past periods of technical changes ?

Acheulian hand ax.

Web of tools, techniques and related inventions.

Understand

Comprehending and describing technical complexes.

The necessary dialog to make anything work well.

How is it technology has three sides and not just two?

Defining technology: what came first tools or science?

The great tectonic shift from mechanical to manufacturing was significant?

Tools and their relation to instruments, music and architecture.

Nanotech- technology and the coming revolution.

How pervasive is the widespread influence of automated technology?

Pursell & Pacey compared

Overview

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

Where are we going next?

Organize

Pursell on the pervasiveness of organization.

How complicated is technology?

Three facets or aspects of tools.

Where do we find technological complexes?

How could tools be related to architecture and music?

The consequences of the Protestant ethos in technological innovation in Europe.

What is the best way to conceptualize technical changes in the past?

When did key inventions occur?

Is time really a technological creation or technical illusion?

Richard Arkwright and textiles.

The steam revolution in mechanization.

Technology as art

What is the meaning we discover in technology?

Railways as a prototype in creating our automated reality.

Pursell's analytical methods.

Pursell on the pervasiveness of organization.

Apply

A learning objective for these weekly readings is for participants to speak formally about how manufacturing emerged from hand work and in written and discursive dialog give over a dozen historical examples of key devices that form the basis of the industrial organization of society, emergence of a financial and commercial economy built on new dorms of capital and labor.

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

Where are we going next?

Reflect

Reflection, steps to thinking twice about first impressions.

Two Cultures.

Our beliefs about inventions.

What is essential to realize & know when analyzing technology?

What is the clash of values created by our constant reliance on technology?

Analyze

How many different ways does technology influence people and society?

A nearly incomprehensible world we inhabit?

What are Kranzberg's Laws concerning technological change?

How does technology change ?

Why is technical change not an advance?

What sort of pervasive influence does contemporary technology display?

Reflection, steps to.

A learning objective for these weekly readings is for participants is to present evidence from every author for or against C. P. Snow's claims and actively participate in a debate about how technology created or did not create a cultural divide that now hampers further progress.

Snow's words | Snow's essay interpreted | The Two Culture's context | The Redux Essay | Siry essay

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

Where are we going next?

Evaluate

Examine & evaluate

In retrospect a Summary

Critics of technology.

Technology is not always the apparent material objects we use.

The measures of what constitutes modern and modernity in technology.

What is modern man searching for?

An historian of technology says it ain' t so.

Invisible aspects of technology.

Technology upsets the status quo & disturbs the existing order!

Technical confrontation with our own humanity.

Create effective responses to:

The ongoing and coming technological revolutions.

Evaluating the evidence about automation.

The challenges of global climate chaos.

Population and the "technical fix."

When things break down!

Broken defenses

Robots and robotics: filling the surrogate spaces.

Irony of automation with respect to gender equity.

The challenges of modern automation

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

Where are we going next?

Remember | Understand | Apply | Analyze | Evaluate | Create

Syllabus | Calendar

Links for the class.

readings

Basic information for the class.
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Weeks 7-10 -- midterm debate
Week 11

Technology index landscape index words index map index photograph index

Navigating this site.

My Schedule

Search here

Where to start with technology?

A complete synopsis or summary of the class on one site: view this.

Vocabulary devoted to words you need to know.

Metaphors are crucial to use and interpret.

Methods are the means we have to test our assumptions.

Time periods in the history of technology.

A new grammar for our experiences may certainly be necessary to develop.

Material to consider if you want to do really well.

Tips to surviving in the course.

Interviews

Internet and research methods

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

When writing, 4 things to always consider | Writing Criteria: listed as a form for | Free writing

Dictionary | Vocabulary | Advanced Vocabulary | Words | fact vs fiction | Rare words | theme vs thesis | antonyms | dialectic | obscure words

Indexes: | Science | Population | Genetics | Global Warming | Nature | Darwin | Technology | Site Analysis | Brief | Cases

• Drop by the office if you have questions or concerns.

Rollins College
1000 Holt Avenue.
Winter Park, Fl. 32789
Joseph Siry, Ph.D.

Where are we going next?

Foreign Press a sampling.

landscape index words index photograph index

American Academy for the Advancement of Science, AAAS: Atlas.

American Museum of Natural History (New York)

Boston Athenaeum

Inside the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA.

Smithsonian Institution: Washington D.C., science and technology page.

US Government on the web.

US Geological Survey, USGS.

University of California, Library.

University of Texas, Library.

National Public Radio, NPR.

New York Public Library.

Population Reference Bureau,

Research Facilities in Museums on the web.

Encyclopedia Britannica.

MET Office: Hadley Climate Centre in UK has recent press releases.

Search the Internet an easy way

Search this site here –

Sitemap

Some specific ports of entry:

√ Environmental topics portal for the web.

√ US Census Bureau (decennial census data)

√ World Resources Institute, WRI

√ Guide to some other reliable sites.

	Weekly focus page
	Tulips as commercial investment tools?
	Tools of Toil: what to read.
	Tools are historical building blocks of technology.
Critics say that 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,