Governance, Innovation & Change
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Technology refers to physical objects, social practices, knowledge, and other artifacts people create, commonly to achieve specific goals.
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Technology refers both to physical artefacts and to the social practices that specify how those artefacts can be used. Technological systems can therefore be decomposed into physical components and social components, including institutions.1)
Arthur (2009) distinguishes three senses of the word. The most basic is technology as a means to fulfil a human purpose — a method, process, or device, whether material or non-material, always directed toward human ends. The second is technology as an assemblage of practices and components: collections or toolboxes of individual technologies and practices, which Arthur calls bodies of technology or domains. The third is technology as the entire collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture.2)
A further conceptual distinction exists between technology and technique. In French, German, and Slavic languages, technique covers all activities associated with things technical, while technologie is more specialised, referring 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.3)