TECHNOLOGY

 It may seem like a straightforward question, but technology is about more than just gadgets and gizmos. Andy Lane explains what it means to different people.

The role and impact of technology in our personal and professional lives is constantly growing. Understanding how people shape technology and how technology shapes human relationships and the natural world is important not only for those who research, develop and use new technologies but also for all those people and organizations who need to use those technologies in their work and personal lives.

Technology is not a neutral word. Different people will give it a different meaning depending on their point of view and content.

The members of the Faculty of Technology are different but for many years we have used one technical definition that reflects our goals and objectives:

Technology is concerned with understanding how information is used intelligently in organized activities involving people and machines that meet sustainable goals. There are three key elements to this definition:

1. Technology is about making action to meet human need rather than simply understanding the workings of the natural world, which is the purpose of science. The development of the microscope was driven by the need to explore the world of the young, in addition to our pointless view. This technical solution to the long-standing problem has enabled us to better understand the earth's operations that have led to the development of more technologies.

2. It uses far more than scientific knowledge and includes values ​​as factual, practical art knowledge as theoretical knowledge. The iPod is an example of where the physics of making a small tool carries so much music married to a creative design to make a iconic image must have an accessory.

3. It includes systematic processes. It involves intentional and unintentional interactions between products (equipment, devices, artifacts) and the people and programs that make, use or are involved in them through various processes. Most people like to drink coffee, usually at a coffee shop. That coffee may have come from trees specially bred for a growing crop that supports a small farmer and his family but in need of pesticides made locally. The harvested coffee beans themselves will be transported around the world, processed and packaged in stores that make coffee cups in a deliberately polystyrene cup but need to be discarded and so on. Every choice we make depends on, and nourishes, the most dependable and far-reaching lifestyle where some have more and some have less.

The technology used, can work where people should be proficient in many of the following: engineering, communications, design, development, innovation, management, production, modeling, and thought processes. But technology also gives us a variety of products that can be used for good or bad or where benefits are opposed and similarly the processes involved in the production and use of technology mean that we should all be interested in whether it gives us and empowers someone to sustain the future.