Can we define technology?
We can't say technology is unique to human beings as animals use it too
technology = tools that are made and are passed down socially
what are the turning points in controlling nature?
tools, agriculture, and writing:
- Jane Goodall has shown that chimpanzees
use tools in the same sense humans do
- paleontologists find that early species of humans, homo erectus, 1.5 million years ago, used fire and produced simple tools. But in primitive societies there is little division of labor so the work process tends to stay very simple.
- hunting and gathering seems to be an easy life--12 to 19 hours of work a week--so why develop agiculture?
- agriculture is a key turning point--new idea of
controlling nature plus a greater division of labor
- less than 10 thousand years ago agriculture was invented in northern Iraq, and within a few thousand years independently in other parts of the world--China, India, central America.
- slash and burn agriculture did not make much difference, because it cannot support large populations--villages of 60 people or so.
- Irrigation is the key to the development of cities because it supports 14 times the population on the same area of land. It takes twice the labor as dry farming. A city of 3,000 or so requires organization and therefore the invention of writing
- labor demands increased as a result of technological advance, but it also allowed specialization--the invention of government, writing, and in general of civilization. This second revolution happened in Egypt and Mesopotamia about 3000 BCE.
- This meant the opportunities of a market, but at first opportunities to do new things were very limited by people's beliefs
Mesopotamian writing
Nye wants us to see that technology
is something like writing--it involves being able to tell a story, to
see events in sequence
Now consider the word: technology
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definitions:
1. a. A discourse or treatise on an art or arts; the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts.
3. In Greek: systematic treatment (of grammar, etc.), Obsolete. rare.
4. Special Combinations: technology assessment, the assessment of the effects on society of new technology; technology transfer, the transfer of new technology or advanced technological information from the developed to the less developed countries of the world.
Nye's point is that the word technology used to mean something very different
first meant only a book about practical arts, then came to mean the arts themselves
So what does "practical arts" mean?
Learning used to be divided up into:
What held back technology before the Middle Ages?
Archimedes
But that still wasn't what we usually mean by techology today:
Now consider the word: technology
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following definitions:
1. a. A discourse or treatise on an art or arts; the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts.
b. Practical
arts collectively.
c. A
particular practical or
industrial art.
d. "high-technology" applied to a firm, industry, etc., that produces or utilizes highly advanced and specialized technology, or to the products of such a firm. Similarly low-technology.
2. The terminology of a
particular art or subject; technical
nomenclature. d. "high-technology" applied to a firm, industry, etc., that produces or utilizes highly advanced and specialized technology, or to the products of such a firm. Similarly low-technology.
3. In Greek: systematic treatment (of grammar, etc.), Obsolete. rare.
4. Special Combinations: technology assessment, the assessment of the effects on society of new technology; technology transfer, the transfer of new technology or advanced technological information from the developed to the less developed countries of the world.
Nye's point is that the word technology used to mean something very different
first meant only a book about practical arts, then came to mean the arts themselves
So what does "practical arts" mean?
Learning used to be divided up into:
- fine arts: painting, music, etc.--beauty for its own sake,
not practical
- liberal
arts: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, musical
harmonics, and astronomy, also not practical
- practical arts: anything useful
What held back technology before the Middle Ages?
- belief that the physical world was controlled by Gods who behaved irrationally (example: Mesopotamia)
- slavery--you don't need labor-saving devices if you have slaves to do the hard work
- the attitude that practical life was beneath the
dignity of educated men (example: Hellenistic Alexandria)
- Plutarch said of Archimedes: "Although his inventions had won for him a name and fame for superhuman sagacity, he would not consent to leave behind him any treatise on this subject, but regarding the work of an engineer and every art that ministers to the needs of life as ignoble and vulgar, he devoted his earnest efforts only to those studies the subtlety and charm of which are not affected by the claims of necessity."
Archimedes
- technology began to be more valued in the middle ages (11th
to 14th centuries)--extensive use of water power, agricutural
inventions, use of the stirrup, late in the middle ages beginning of
development of gunpowder weapons. People had a more positive
attitude towards technology and it began to develop faster
But that still wasn't what we usually mean by techology today:
- Watch out for the idea that technology is the application of science--that was not true before the 18th century and only gradually became so over two centuries before about 1950. Even now, there are many technological innovations that don't involve science.
- Technology became the word for high prestige practical arts, it isn't so much used for low prestige ones (which is why technology today is sometimes used to mean computers--they have the highest prestige right now)
This page written and copyright Pamela E. Mack