Technology

Technology is the set of techniques, skills, methods and processes used to produce goods or services, or to achieve practical goals, including scientific research itself. It may consist of knowledge of a procedure, or it may be built into machines that operate without the user understanding their inner workings.

The word comes from the Greek téchnē, meaning 'art' or 'craft', and -logía, meaning 'treatise' or 'study'. For centuries, knowledge of how to make things was regarded as distinct from science, but in the twentieth century the word came to mean the systematic use of knowledge for practical ends. From prehistory, early stone tools, the control of fire, clothing, housing and agriculture show that technology has accompanied human beings from the start, and that its advances have transformed societies, the organisation of work and the ways people relate to one another.

Technology serves very different purposes. The most basic respond to needs such as eating, keeping warm or staying safe; but it also serves communication, saves effort and expresses status. An object may be valued for its usefulness, its beauty or the social meaning it conveys, and these dimensions often overlap. Great religious buildings or monuments of political prestige are examples of technologies designed in large part to impress.

Philosophically, the central question is whether technology improves or diminishes the human condition. Some thinkers regard it as a neutral instrument that extends our capacities. Others stress that it is never neutral, because it reshapes life, creates dependencies and raises ethical problems of its own that cannot be settled by efficiency alone. Currents such as neo-Luddism and anarcho-primitivism criticise its pervasiveness for environmental damage and alienation; transhumanism and techno-progressivism hold that continuous technical advance benefits society. Between these positions, the debate over how to regulate its effects, its negative externalities and its impact on employment and inequality remains open.