We're just over a quarter of the way into John Dyer's fascinating book on technology: From the Garden to the City––the redeeming and corrupting power of technology. Before Dyer moves any further, he now provides a working definition.
I find myself thinking, as did a friend of the author's, that technology is limited in its scope. The computer I use to blog with is technology. The internet, upon which I post this and you read this, is technology. The cell phone (or more technically accurate, smart phone, if such is the case for you) upon which you read this is technology. But what else?
Considering the origins of technology––typically seen as the skills and tools of making things––and how we understand it today, it can include "just about everything." Four areas help define it, lend it shape (pg. 58):
1. the skill of making things,
2. the study of the skill of making things,
3. the tools used to make things, and
4. the things made with these tools
Dyer enters into a short, but fascinating discussion of the growth of technology over the centuries. it's mind-boggling, when you consider the tremendous growth of it over just the couple of hundred years. Along with this growth has come a complexity that must be grasped in order to help define technology. Again, Dyer offers up four layers of technology (pg. 60ff):
1. Hardware––the stuff we use, e.g., clocks, thermometers, etc.
2. Manufacturing––the tools & systems used to make the hardware
3. Methodology––the knowledge & know-how to make the stuff we use
4. Social Usage––the customs & rules how we use all this hardware
Having read through this section, I realized that technology is a bit more complex than just things, material objects. At this point, the author gives the definition that will guide the rest of the discussion:
Technology is the human activity of using tools to transform God's creation for practical purposes.
It involves what we do, as well as what we do that with. Therefore, it is more than tools, objects, hardware. So, using the analogy Dyer likes to use throughout, a shovel becomes something with which we shape the land around us, not just a tool for digging a hole in the ground. It is a tool––just one that helps shape us in what we do and it helps us create––produce a product that helps or is consumed by others. This simple thing, a shovel, is changing the world (the culture) around us through its use. Start to carry out this process of transformation with other items of technology––cell phones, laptop computers, TVs––and you see how technology is more than just an object. And, you'll start to see why technology really isn't neutral.