- "Advanced technology" redirects here. For the Advanced Technology form factor, see AT (form factor).
By the mid 20th century, humans had achieved a mastery of technology
sufficient to leave the atmosphere of the Earth for the first time and explore space.
Technology deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its natural environment. The word technology comes from the Greek technología (τεχνολογία) — téchnē (τέχνη), 'craft' and -logía (-λογία), the study of something, or the branch of knowledge of a discipline.[1] A strict definition is elusive; technology can be material objects of use to humanity, such as machines, but can also encompass broader themes, including systems,
methods of organization, and techniques. The term can either be applied
generally or to specific areas: examples include "construction
technology", "medical technology", or "state-of-the-art technology".
The human species' use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The prehistorical discovery of the ability to control fire increased the available sources of food and the invention of the wheel helped humans in travelling in and controlling their environment. Recent technological developments, including the printing press, the telephone, and the Internet, have lessened physical barriers to communication
and allowed humans to interact freely on a global scale. However, not
all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the development of weapons of ever-increasing destructive power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.
Technology has affected society and its surroundings in a number of ways. In many societies, technology has helped develop more advanced economies (including today's global economy) and has allowed the rise of a leisure class. Many technological processes produce unwanted by-products, known as pollution, and deplete natural resources, to the detriment of the Earth and its environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and new technology often raises new ethical questions. Examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, a term originally applied only to machines, and the challenge of traditional norms.
Philosophical debates have arisen over the present and future use of
technology in society, with disagreements over whether technology
improves the human condition or worsens it. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism,
and similar movements criticise the pervasiveness of technology in the
modern world, opining that it harms the environment and alienates
people; proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and techno-progressivism
view continued technological progress as beneficial to society and the
human condition. Indeed, until recently, it was believed that the
development of technology was restricted only to human beings, but
recent scientific studies indicate that other primates and certain dolphin communities have developed simple tools and learned to pass their knowledge to other generations.
The invention of the printing press made it possible for scientists and politicians to communicate their ideas with ease, leading to the Age of Enlightenment; an example of technology as a cultural force.
The Merriam-Webster
dictionary offers a definition of the term: "the practical application
of knowledge especially in a particular area" and "a capability given
by the practical application of knowledge".[1] Ursula Franklin,
in her 1989 "Real World of Technology" lecture, gave another definition
of the concept; it is "practice, the way we do things around here".[2] The term is often used to imply a specific field of technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics, rather than technology as a whole.[3] Bernard Stiegler, in Technics and Time, 1, defines technology in two ways: as "the pursuit of life by means other than life", and as "organized inorganic matter."[4]
Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both
material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and
physical effort in order to achieve some value. In this usage,
technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve
real-world problems. It is a far-reaching term that may include simple
tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material; virtual technology, such as computer software and business methods, fall under this definition of technology.[5]
The word "technology" can also be used to refer to a collection of
techniques. In this context, it is the current state of humanity's
knowledge of how to combine resources to produce desired products, to
solve problems, fulfill needs, or satisfy wants; it includes technical
methods, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials. When
combined with another term, such as "medical technology" or "space
technology", it refers to the state of the respective field's knowledge
and tools. "State-of-the-art technology" refers to the high technology available to humanity in any field.
Technology can be viewed as an activity that forms or changes culture.[6]
Additionally, technology is the application of math, science, and the
arts for the benefit of life as it is known. A modern example is the
rise of communication technology, which has lessened barriers to human interaction and, as a result, has helped spawn new subcultures; the rise of cyberculture has, at its basis, the development of the Internet and the computer.[7]
Not all technology enhances culture in a creative way; technology can
also help facilitate political oppression and war via tools such as
guns. As a cultural activity, technology predates both science and engineering, each of which formalize some aspects of technological endeavor.
Science, engineering and technology
The distinction between science, engineering and technology is not always clear. Science is the reasoned investigation or study of phenomena, aimed at discovering enduring principles among elements of the phenomenal world by employing formal techniques such as the scientific method.[8] Technologies are not usually exclusively products of science, because they have to satisfy requirements such as utility, usability and safety.
Engineering is the goal-oriented
process of designing and making tools and systems to exploit natural
phenomena for practical human means, often (but not always) using
results and techniques from science. The development of technology may
draw upon many fields of knowledge, including scientific, engineering, mathematical, linguistic, and historical knowledge, to achieve some practical result.
Technology is often a consequence of science and engineering —
although technology as a human activity precedes the two fields. For
example, science might study the flow of electrons in electrical conductors,
by using already-existing tools and knowledge. This new-found knowledge
may then be used by engineers to create new tools and machines, such as
semiconductors, computers,
and other forms of advanced technology. In this sense, scientists and
engineers may both be considered technologists; the three fields are
often considered as one for the purposes of research and reference.[9]
The exact relations between science and technology in particular
have been debated by scientists, historians, and policymakers in the
late 20th century, in part because the debate can inform the funding of
basic and applied science. In immediate wake of World War II,
for example, in the United States it was widely considered that
technology was simply "applied science" and that to fund basic science
was to reap technological results in due time. An articulation of this
philosophy could be found explicitly in Vannevar Bush's treatise on postwar science policy, Science—The Endless Frontier:
"New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous
additions to knowledge of the laws of nature... This essential new
knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research." In
the late-1960s, however, this view came under direct attack, leading
towards initiatives to fund science for specific tasks (initiatives
resisted by the scientific community). The issue remains
contentious—though most analysts resist the model that technology
simply is a result of scientific research.[10][11]
Role in human history
Main articles: History of technology and Timeline of historic inventions
Paleolithic (2.5 million – 10,000 BC)
A primitive chopper
The use of tools by early humans was partly a process of discovery, partly of evolution. Early humans evolved from a race of foraging hominids which were already bipedal,[12] with a brain mass approximately one third that of modern humans.[13] Tool use remained relatively unchanged for most of early human history, but approximately 50,000 years ago, a complex set of behaviors and tool use emerged, believed by many archaeologists to be connected to the emergence of fully-modern language.[14]
Stone tools
Hand axes from the Acheulian period
A Clovis point, made via pressure flaking
Human ancestors have been using stone and other tools since long before the emergence of Homo sapiens approximately 200,000 years ago.[15] The earliest methods of stone tool making, known as the Oldowan "industry", date back to at least 2.3 million years ago,[16] with the earliest direct evidence of tool usage found in Ethiopia within the Great Rift Valley, dating back to 2.5 million years ago.[17] This era of stone tool use is called the Paleolithic, or "Old stone age", and spans all of human history up to the development of agriculture approximately 12,000 years ago.
To make a stone tool, a "core" of hard stone with specific flaking properties (such as flint) was struck with a hammerstone.
This flaking produced a sharp edge on the core stone as well as on the
flakes, either of which could be used as tools, primarily in the form
of choppers or scrapers.[18] These tools greatly aided the early humans in their hunter-gatherer lifestyle to perform a variety of tasks including butchering carcasses (and breaking bones to get at the marrow); chopping wood; cracking open nuts; skinning an animal for its hide; and even forming other tools out of softer materials such as bone and wood.[19]
The earliest stone tools were crude, being little more than a fractured rock. In the Acheulian era, beginning approximately 1.65 million years ago, methods of working these stone into specific shapes, such as hand axes emerged. The Middle Paleolithic, approximately 300,000 years ago, saw the introduction of the prepared-core technique, where multiple blades could be rapidly formed from a single core stone.[18] The Upper Paleolithic, beginning approximately 40,000 years ago, saw the introduction of pressure flaking, where a wood, bone, or antler punch could be used to shape a stone very finely.[20]
Fire
The discovery and utilization of fire, a simple energy source with many profound uses, was a turning point in the technological evolution of humankind.[21] The exact date of its discovery is not known; evidence of burnt animal bones at the Cradle of Humankind suggests that the domestication of fire occurred before 1,000,000 BC;[22] scholarly consensus indicates that Homo erectus had controlled fire by between 500,000 BC and 400,000 BC.[23][24] Fire, fueled with wood and charcoal,
allowed early humans to cook their food to increase its digestibility,
improving its nutrient value and broadening the number of foods that
could be eaten.[25]
Clothing and shelter
Other technological advances made during the Paleolithic era were clothing
and shelter; the adoption of both technologies cannot be dated exactly,
but they were a key to humanity's progress. As the Paleolithic era
progressed, dwellings became more sophisticated and more elaborate; as
early as 380,000 BC, humans were constructing temporary wood huts.[26][27] Clothing, adapted from the fur and hides of hunted animals, helped humanity expand into colder regions; humans began to migrate out of Africa by 200,000 BC and into other continents, such as Eurasia.[28]
Humans began to work bones, antler, and hides, as evidenced by burins and racloirs produced during this period.[citation needed]
Neolithic through Classical Antiquity (10,000BC – 300AD)
An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, axe heads, chisels, and polishing tools.
Man's technological ascent began in earnest in what is known as the Neolithic period ("New stone age"). The invention of polished stone axes was a major advance because it allowed forest clearance on a large scale to create farms. The discovery of agriculture allowed for the feeding of larger populations, and the transition to a sedentist
lifestyle increased the number of children that could be simultaneously
raised, as young children no longer needed to be carried, as was the
case with the nomadic lifestyle. Additionally, children could
contribute labor to the raising of crops more readily than they could
to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.[29][30]
With this increase in population and availability of labor came an increase in labor specialization.[31] What triggered the progression from early Neolithic villages to the first cities, such as Uruk, and the first civilizations, such as Sumer, is not specifically known; however, the emergence of increasingly hierarchical
social structures, the specialization of labor, trade and war amongst
adjacent cultures, and the need for collective action to overcome
environmental challenges, such as the building of dikes and reservoirs, are all thought to have played a role.[32]
Metal tools
Continuing improvements led to the furnace and bellows and provided the ability to smelt and forge native metals (naturally occurring in relatively pure form).[33] Gold, copper, silver, and lead,
were such early metals. The advantages of copper tools over stone,
bone, and wooden tools were quickly apparent to early humans, and
native copper was probably used from near the beginning of Neolithic times (about 8000 BC).[34]
Native copper does not naturally occur in large amounts, but copper
ores are quite common and some of them produce metal easily when burned
in wood or charcoal fires. Eventually, the working of metals led to the
discovery of alloys such as bronze and brass (about 4000 BC). The first uses of iron alloys such as steel dates to around 1400 BC.
Energy and Transport
Meanwhile, humans were learning to harness other forms of energy. The earliest known use of wind power is the sailboat.[citation needed] The earliest record of a ship under sail is shown on an Egyptian pot dating back to 3200 BC.[citation needed]
From prehistoric times, Egyptians probably used "the power of the Nile"
annual floods to irrigate their lands, gradually learning to regulate
much of it through purposely-built irrigation channels and 'catch'
basins. Similarly, the early peoples of Mesopotamia, the Sumerians,
learned to use the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for much the same
purposes. But more extensive use of wind and water (and even human)
power required another invention.
The wheel was invented in circa 4000 BC.
According to archaeologists, the wheel was invented around 4000 B.C. The wheel was probably independently invented in Mesopotamia (in present-day Iraq)
as well. Estimates on when this may have occurred range from 5500 to
3000 B.C., with most experts putting it closer to 4000 B.C. The oldest
artifacts with drawings that depict wheeled carts date from about 3000
B.C.; however, the wheel may have been in use for millennia before
these drawings were made. There is also evidence from the same period
of time that wheels were used for the production of pottery.
(Note that the original potter's wheel was probably not a wheel, but
rather an irregularly shaped slab of flat wood with a small hollowed or
pierced area near the center and mounted on a peg driven into the
earth. It would have been rotated by repeated tugs by the potter or his
assistant.) More recently, the oldest-known wooden wheel in the world
was found in the Ljubljana marshes of Slovenia.[35]
The invention of the wheel revolutionized activities as disparate as
transportation, war, and the production of pottery (for which it may
have been first used). It didn't take long to discover that wheeled
wagons could be used to carry heavy loads and fast (rotary) potters'
wheels enabled early mass production of pottery. But it was the use of
the wheel as a transformer of energy (through water wheels, windmills,
and even treadmills) that revolutionized the application of nonhuman
power sources.
Modern history (300 AD —)
Tools include both simple machines (such as the lever, the screw, and the pulley), and more complex machines (such as the clock, the engine, the electric generator and the electric motor, the computer, radio, and the Space Station,
among many others). As tools increase in complexity, so does the type
of knowledge needed to support them. Complex modern machines require
libraries of written technical manuals of collected information that
has continually increased and improved — their designers, builders,
maintainers, and users often require the mastery of decades of
sophisticated general and specific training. Moreover, these tools have
become so complex that a comprehensive infrastructure of technical
knowledge-based lesser tools, processes and practices (complex tools in
themselves) exist to support them, including engineering, medicine, and computer science. Complex manufacturing and construction techniques and organizations are needed to construct and maintain them. Entire industries
have arisen to support and develop succeeding generations of
increasingly more complex tools. The relationship of technology with
society ( culture) is generally characterized as synergistic,
symbiotic, co-dependent, co-influential, and co-producing, i.e.
technology and society depend heavily one upon the other (technology
upon culture, and culture upon technology). It is also generally
believed that this synergistic relationship first occurred at the dawn
of humankind with the invention of simple tools, and continues with
modern technologies today. Today and throughout history, technology
influences and is influenced by such societal issues/factors as
economics, values, ethics, institutions, groups, the environment,
government, among others. The discipline studying the impacts of
science, technology, and society and vice versa is called Science and
technology in society.
Technology and philosophy
Technicism
Generally, technicism is an over reliance or overconfidence in technology as a benefactor of society.
Taken to extreme, some argue that technicism is the belief that
humanity will ultimately be able to control the entirety of existence
using technology. In other words, human beings will someday be able to
master all problems and possibly even control the future using
technology. Some, such as Monsma,[36] connect these ideas to the abdication of religion as a higher moral authority.
Optimism
See also: Extropianism
Optimistic assumptions are made by proponents of ideologies such as transhumanism and singularitarianism, which view technological development
as generally having beneficial effects for the society and the human
condition. In these ideologies, technological development is morally
good. Some critics see these ideologies as examples of scientism and techno-utopianism and fear the notion of human enhancement and technological singularity which they support. Some have described Karl Marx as a techno-optimist.[37]
Pessimism
See also: Luddite, Neo-luddism, Anarcho-primitivism, and Bioconservatism
On the somewhat pessimistic side are certain philosophers like the Herbert Marcuse and John Zerzan, who believe that technological societies are inherently flawed a priori.
They suggest that the result of such a society is to become evermore
technological at the cost of freedom and psychological health.
Many, such as the Luddites and prominent philosopher Martin Heidegger, hold serious reservations, although not a priori flawed reservations, about technology. Heidegger presents such a view in "The Question Concerning Technology":
"Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of
technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the
technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree
and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it."[38]
Some of the most poignant criticisms of technology are found in what
are now considered to be dystopian literary classics, for example Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and other writings, Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. And, in Faust by Goethe,
Faust's selling his soul to the devil in return for power over the
physical world, is also often interpreted as a metaphor for the
adoption of industrial technology.
An overtly anti-technological treatise is Industrial Society and Its Future, written by Theodore Kaczynski (aka The Unabomber)
and printed in several major newspapers (and later books) as part of an
effort to end his bombing campaign of the techno-industrial
infrastructure.
Appropriate technology
See also: Technocriticism and Technorealism
The notion of appropriate technology, however, was developed in the 20th century (e.g., see the work of Jacques Ellul)
to describe situations where it was not desirable to use very new
technologies or those that required access to some centralized infrastructure or parts or skills imported from elsewhere. The eco-village movement emerged in part due to this concern.
Other animal species
This adult gorilla uses a branch as a walking stick to gauge the water's depth; an example of technology usage by primates.
Credit: Public Library of Science
The use of basic technology is also a feature of other animal species apart from humans. These include primates such as chimpanzees, some dolphin communities,[39][40] and crows.[41][42]
Considering a more generic perspective of technology as ethology of
active environmental conditioning and control, we can also refer animal
examples such as beavers and their dams, or bees and their honeycombs.
The ability to make and use tools was once considered a defining characteristic of the genus Homo.[43]
However, the discovery of tool construction among chimpanzees and
related primates has discarded the notion of the use of technology as
unique to humans. For example, researchers have observed wild
chimpanzees utilising tools for foraging: some of the tools used
include leaf sponges, termite fishing probes, pestles and levers.[44] West African chimpanzees also use stone hammers and anvils for cracking nuts,[45] as do capuchin monkeys of Boa Vista, Brazil.[46]
