Defining Technology

Post date: Jul 9, 2015 2:39:07 AM

As part of a how-to-philosophize-about-technology project, I'm trying to develop a theoretical definition of technology (the term, not the referent).I have three purposes for doing so:

A- to provide a suitable criterion for making precise vague conceptual boundaries;

B- to identify what unites diverse technologies under the single term technology; and

C- to draw attention to kinds of technology we tend to ignore or marginalize.

Definitions that satisfy Purpose A provide a tool for resolving disagreements about whether certain things, themselves neither clearly technological nor clearly not, should be classified as technologies. Definitions that satisfy Purpose B provide an explanatory foundation for making sense of technology. Those that satisfy Purpose C, finally, highlight the pervasiveness of technology in our everyday lives and thereby ensure that our sensemaking is not unduly limited. That said, here is my current definitional attempt:

The form of technology most salient to 21st century citizens of affluent nations is industrial technology. The industrial technologies most salient to these same citizens are the objects made by industrial workers. Call these technology products, and understand this category to include only that which is movable and manufactured: that is, they can be moved without their destruction (but perhaps with their disassembly), and human labor within some industrial process (directly or indirectly) causes them to exist. Exemplar technology products include plows and chemical fertilizers, computers and batteries, dishwashers and dish detergents, automobiles and gasoline. Less obviously, this category also includes genetically modified foods, computer apps, bathtubs, and space rockets.

Technology product is likely the central current meaning of technology, and the meaning we most often have in mind when we think about technology. But technological product does not exhaust the meaning of technology. The guiding motivation for adopting a broader meaning rests with the truism that technology makes an impact upon the world. If that which bears responsibility for technological impacts upon the world deserves the name technology, then certainly technology products are technologies. But the locus of responsibility for technological impacts extends beyond mere products. This is for two reasons. First, products do not come into existence of their own accord. They are made to exist, and these creative causes inherit responsibility for technological impacts in the same way that parents inherit responsibility for the actions of their children. Second, just as acorns do not grow into oak trees without the help of sunlight and moist soil, products do not make their impact without the help of supporting conditions, in the same way that. These functional conditions share responsibility for technological impacts, in the same way that poisoned soil shares responsibility for sickly plant. Here's a figure that illustrates these additional kinds of technology.

Call the methods for creating specific technology products techniques. Some techniques are well-defined procedures. For example, selective laser melting involves precise and ordered series of events for using high-energy lasers to melt metal powder into intricately designed patterns. But techniques need not be well-defined. Some – perhaps many – are invented and modified during the creative process, in response to practical obstacles as well as feedback from stakeholders and experiments. Technique is distinct from skill or know-how, insofar as these latter refer to an ability or knowledge for enacting a technique: one acquires skill upon learning a technique, but the technique itself is a disembodied method awaiting bodily enactment.

Technique alone is insufficient for creating technology products. Creation also requires material inputs, either as antecedently made technology products or as raw materials from nature. Technicians, too, are essential, for the sake of enacting technique upon material input. But neither nature nor technician ought to be categorized as technology, for the same reason that we categorize neither nature nor scientist as kinds of science.

However, any minimally complex technology product requires for its creation, in addition to technicians enacting technique upon material input, some system within which technicians operate. Call such a system, which makes possible the execution of techniques for creating specific technology products, a technology industry. An exemplar technology industry is the automotive industry. This industry consists, in part, of automobile manufacturing plants, themselves collections of machines arrayed along assembly lines. But the industry also includes organizational structures for managing workers, acquiring materials, creating product demand and distributing demanded products, and handling social and legal issues related to the impacts of those products.

While techniques and technology industries qualify as technology by virtue of their power to create technology products, certain kinds of infrastructure and institution qualify as technology by virtue of their power to empower those products as causes. Call technology infrastructure any system of designed or manufactured objects that makes possible the effective use of technology products. These systems are often constructed from many and diverse technology products. A classic exemplar is the technology infrastructure for trains, which includes an elaborate network of railroad tracks, coal yards, water tanks, crossings, and signs. Another is landline telephone infrastructure, which includes an elaborate network of phone wires and cables, utility poles, and telephone exchanges.

Technology infrastructures are the material preconditions for achieving the designed or intended outcomes of technology products. Technology products have social preconditions as well, in the form of organizational arrangements that make possible the orderly use of technology products for their designed or intended purposes. Call these arrangements technology institutions. Technology institutions structure relations among users of technology products. They are distinct from those users, in the same way that techniques are distinct from their enactors. For example, technology institutions for mobile phones include mandated and market-based standards for data management, security protocols for voice and data services, companies that provide access to those services, companies that provide access to the phones themselves, as well as laws and policies that restrict the use of mobile devices (such as during driving or classroom instruction).