This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong. ====== Technology ====== Technology refers both to physical artifacts as well as to social practices that specify how these artifacts can be used. Thus, technological systems can be decomposed in the physical components as well as the social components, including institutions. [Source: Kwakkel, Jan H, and Erik Pruyt. ‘Exploratory Modeling and Analysis, an Approach for Model-Based Foresight under Deep Uncertainty’. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 80, no. 3 (2013): 419–31.] ===== Three Definitions by Brian Arthur (2009)===== "The **first** and most **basic** one is that a **technology is a means to fulfill a human purpose**. For some technologies—oil reefining—the purpose is explicit. For others—the computer—the purpose may be hazy, multiple, and changing. As a means, a technology may be a method or process or device: a particular speech recognition algorithm, or a filtration process in chemical engineering, or a diesel engine. It may be simple: a roller bearing. Or it may be complicated: a wavelength division multiplexer. It may be material: an electrical generator. Or it may be nonmaterial: a digital compression algorithm. Whichever it is, it is always a means to carry out a human purpose. The **second** definition ... is a **plural** one: **technology as an assemblage of practices and components**. This covers technologies such as electronics or biotechnology that are **collections or toolboxes of individual technologies and practices**. Strictly speaking, we should call these **bodies of technology** [or "domain"]. ... ... a **third** meaning. This is **technology as the entire collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture**." [Source: Arthur, W Brian. The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves. Simon and Schuster, 2009.] ===== TECHNIQUE and TECHNOLOGY ===== "... technology is a word which is taken for granted in English — all the more since "technique" usually refers to thing quite different, or methods. On the Continent, in French, German or the Slavic languages, la technologie seems redundant beside la **technique** which **covers all activities associated with things technical**; technologie is much more specialised and refers to more advanced stages of technique. **English** has no real equivalent of technique and uses **"technology"** to **cover** what on the Continent would be both **technique and technologie**." [Source: Salomon, Jean‐Jacques. ‘What Is Technology? The Issue of Its Origins and Definitions∗’. History and Technology 1, no. 2 (January 1984): 113–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341518408581618.] ~~DISCUSSION|Discussion Section - PAGE OWNER: Klaus Kubeczko~~