Core Concept Conversation: What is technology?
This is a Core Concept Conversation post.
I’ve never had a good understanding of what technology is. In How to Make Wealth, Paul Graham describes it as technique:
What is technology? It’s technique. It’s the way we all do things. And when you discover a new way to do things, its value is multiplied by all the people who use it. It is the proverbial fishing rod, rather than the fish. That’s the difference between a startup and a restaurant or a barber shop. You fry eggs or cut hair one customer at a time. Whereas if you solve a technical problem that a lot of people care about, you help everyone who uses your solution. That’s leverage.
So when Kenji-Lopez Alt created the reverse-sear technique for cooking steak, is that technique a technology? It’s not tangible, it’s just an idea. What about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? Or mindfulness meditation?
I haven’t thought about this too deeply and don’t have too many questions upfront. I’d like to see what happens if I start this conversation off more open-ended.
I like Ursula Franklin’s notion of technology as the way things are done around here, i.e. technology as practice. It’s a pinch from Kenneth Boulding.
Franklin, U. M. (2004). The Real World of Technology (Kindle ed.). Toronto, Canada: Anansi
Quoting Franklin, ” He pointed out that there is a technology of prayer as well as of ploughing; there are technologies to control fear as well as to control flood.”