Technology

Technology

The definition of technology is broad. Mostly people would consider computers and the internet technology, but what about vitamins? If you think of technology as things people create to use to adjust their lifestyle or their surroundings, then vitamins are a technology.

For the purposes of this writing, technology is concerned mostly with machines, and the infrastructure behind those machines. However, behind things like radios and telephones and bicycles, there is an entire structure of less visible technologies (in this case radio towers, phone wires and roads).

Most anthropologist research questions, including those about technology, either they are formulated as questions about people-artifact interactions that occur in activities at various scales or not (M. Brain Schiffer). Mark Kennedy quoted that "all of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness"(www.quotegarden.com). This quote in some way expresses how one becomes lazy when he or she is addicted to a certain technology. For example, one can turn on the stove to heat or cook something to eat but since it is going to take a long time, that person will rather buy a fast food and microwave it to eat. Moreover, Jonas Salk also quoted that "This is perhaps the most beautiful time in human history; it is really pregnant with all kinds of creative possibilities made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man - if man is not enslaved by it"(www.quotegarden.com). When you look at all these machines, and the machines in turn behind them, and those behind them, and so on, you find an immense network of technology exists today. Here we take that network apart and look at where people fit in, and where people make choices about those machines. "Technology is seen as a part of life, not something that can be kept in a separate compartment, and also it has become a catchword with confusion of different meanings (tech: Practice and culture p.3). There is however different technology and here I will focus on just one aspect of it which is technology transportation. People have their different ways of travelling from one destination to another. Technology is like reproduction among living things, each and every day they produce something new and is same with technology. There is always something new and nice in the system. It has become part of our life to extend that we sometimes become addicted to a particular thing that we find it hard to get over with it. For example cell phones have become something that most people are addicted to that they cannot live without it.

There is an argument which states that " Technology is culturally, morally, and politically neutral, that it provides tools independent of local value-systems which can be used impartially to support quite different kinds of lifestyle" (tech: Practice and culture p.3).

In the course pack technology has be define as the means of all modern practical artifice (W. Langdon p. 22). What matters here is the meaning of artifacts. What does it drive and what does it do to social groups. Based on this essay artifact will be define as "Any object manufactured, used or modified by humans. Some examples include tools, utensils, art, food remains, and other products of human activity" (www.smu.edu). John discuss artifact in his lecture as a place where things meet, he also explain further that "if the inner environment is appropriate to the outer environment, or vice versa, the artifact will serve its intended purpose" (lecture by John). In Pinch and Bijker research, they note that social groups, which may or may not be homogenous, define which technological issue or "artifact" is a problem to be addressed (Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch, pp. 30 and 33–34). In the article "Bicycle" by Bijker, examines the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT); it relevant social groups, actors and the development of the artefact in question is discussed in some degree of detail.

Throughout the article, the Bakelite, and fluorescent lighting and the "The Politics of Sociotechnical Change" is focused on providing the necessary information to argue that science and technology are not different from one another and that there is no clear distinction between the two. Like (Layton 1977, p.210) argues "science and technology have become intermixed. Modern technology involves scientist who do technology and technologists who function as scientists . . . The old view that basic sciences generates all the knowledge which technologists then apply will simply not help in understanding contemporary technology"

Another phenomenon that was evident in these articles and the introductory part of the course pack to be specific,