A Day with Technology

1. A basic proposition: in order to stay informed about a subject, you first must define that subject. In the case of technology, it seems that getting down to “basics” can be challenging.

   Let’s begin with the definition of technology:
   Wikipedia: “Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word technology can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible tools such as utensils or machines, and intangible ones such as software.”
   
   Oxford Languages: “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry. “
   
   Merriam Webster: “the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area.”
   
   So it would seem that technology is some practical application of a type of knowledge or information. “Practical” in the sense of putting our knowledge to some sort of work, whether that means a new tool, more control, better outcomes, more power.

   Then we would need to find out what areas of life can, in fact,  be improved or changed, speeded up or perhaps made simple through technology.

   Several lists of technological fields came up on a simple search:
   From indeed.com
   Communication
   Electrical
   Energy
   Manufacturing
   Medical
   Transportation

   From study.com
   Mechanical
   Medical
   Communications
   Electronic
   Industrial
   Manufacturing
   
   Google AI’s overview:
   Information Technology, Communication Technology, Medical Technology, Manufacturing Technology, Transportation Technology, Biotechnology, AI, Internet of Things, Virtual Reality, Robotics.
   
   And from a variety of sources, there were these specific areas mentioned repeatedly:
   Health, AI, Agriculture, Energy, Manufacturing, Audiovisual. Architecture, Construction, Information and Educational Technology, Assistive technology, Entertainment Technology, Robotics, Environmental Technology, Blockchain Technology, Future Technology, Information Technology, Internet of Things, Biotechnology, Computers, Transportation, Food Technology, Business Technology, Space Technology.

   Lists are helpful in that they get your own approach to understanding organized. For technology, is that organization to be found in the field of study, or in the practical application? What kind of list do we find if we draw from multiple fields of study in order to produce an application? Perhaps the way to consider technology is as a “problem solver?” What issues confront us in daily life, and can our effort be minimized or our result be improved if we apply what we know to a “technology” that will accomplish those ends? Must it be “useful” in the sense of managing our basic needs, or do the things that are simply for our entertainment or pleasure fulfill the requirement of being a “technology?”

   One way to think about the idea of technology is to move through an average day for an average person and see where and how life has been adjusted through the practical application of knowledge. Though immediately we have to acknowledge that given the size of the planet and the many and varied ways of living, “average” isn’t something easily agreed upon!

   But, just to attempt to test the idea:
   In the first few moments of a day, the average American will encounter mechanical, communications, electronic, industrial and manufacturing technologies, simply in sleeping in a bed in night clothes in a building with air conditioning/heating, artificial lighting, and perhaps even medical technologies allowing sleep, waking, or general health.

   Very soon after awaking, communications in the form of a cell phone, radio, or television will be encountered; as well as possibly agricultural and food technologies in the form of coffee, cream, sugar, cream, and something to eat.

   Manufacturing and plumbing are typically needed to use the bathroom, take a shower, get dressed, and even do something as simple as open a door, or move clothing from a closet.

   Many people will begin work from a computer (computer technology) at home, many more still will get into a car (automotive technology) and drive to an office (architecture, electrical, electronic, computer, communications, etc.) to work.

   While some amenities of daily life are simple extensions of things people have been doing for eons by the labor required to do them (growing and harvesting food, processing and preparing it, moving from place to place using one’s own power or borrowing that of a horse and cart, or even bicycle or steam engine), many other things we do today are simply the result of being *able* to do them – get information in a tiny device we carry around, and applying that information to how we spend our day; contact people far distant from us; build, mend, maintain structures and infrastructures using tools and machines our ancestors would view with envy and perhaps mistrust.

   But this dive into our brushes with technology only touch upon the very first minutes or at most hour or two of a day, and for some a typical encounter with technology might include highly advanced medical tech, AI or computer interactions, heavy equipment of very specific application, or aiding people with goods and services not available, or perhaps even thought of, when those people were young.

   At the moment of this writing, someone is working on solving a problem that we simply take for granted as a fact of life. The atom is being further explored, robotics are performing more sophisticated operations, and a new energy efficient building is going up even as an ancient one is being probed by ground penetrating tools that uncover its secret history.

   And we have to remind ourselves that many of the most unlikely of explorations have led to immense results: for example, the oldest surviving toy in the world is a 7,500 year old “toy car,” found in the area now known as Turkey, was created, say the historians, before there was even a wheel for chariots, let alone wheels as we now know them. And of course, many toys – like the Slionky, Super Soaker and Silly Putty – were the results of what was originally an investigation into a possible tool. In other words, technology.

   
   
   
   
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