What is Technology?

Technology responds to man’s desire to transform the environment and improve his quality of life. It includes knowledge and techniques over time that is used in an organized manner to satisfy some need.

The word technology comes from the union of two Greek words: «tekne,» a technique, art, and «logia,» which means skill on something.

Technology is one of the four factors of production, along with capital, land, and labour. Man uses technology to satisfy his needs, which may involve transforming his environment, solving problems, increasing efficiency, improving aesthetics, etc.

Well-used technology can improve people’s quality of life (such as developing cleaner production methods). However, misused, it can cause significant harm to people and society (for example, the use of technology for attacks and crimes).

Types of Technology

Technology can be classified according to various criteria. For example, according to its tangibility, it is divided into:

Soft: It brings us intangible assets such as new economic theories or new resource management forms.

Hard: It refers to the one that helps us produce tangible goods such as modern cars, anti-earthquake buildings, etc.

Likewise, according to the diversity of segments in which it can be used, it is secret as:

Flexible: It refers to the one applied in various activities and areas of study. Thus, for example, nanotechnology is used both in health and telecommunications.

Fixed: It is the one mentioning a specific field. For example, a machine for medical operations.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Technology

Below we explain both the aids and the costs of technology in society:

Advantages

Productivity increase: The advancement of skills has made it possible to create tools that have increased productivity in recent years. It achieve thanks to the mechanization of countless processes.

Communications improvements: The transportation of people and the methods of communication between persons have significantly improved thanks to technology and greater ease in communications.

Cost reduction: Creating more efficient systems or automation has cheaper manufacturing processes.

Access to information: Today, we have admission to almost unlimited information thanks to technology.

The emergence of new business models: Technology has brought about a revolution in the business world. The advance this increase many alternatives in the business world.

Advances in science: The creation of new tackles for researchers has brought significant advances and discoveries in areas as necessary as medicine.

Disadvantages

Isolation of people: The appearance of social networks or streaming content platforms has led to a greater degree of loneliness in a large part of the citizens.

Loss of privacy: Technological devices collect user information and distribute it among many companies.

Psychological problems: The constant exposure and imagining of “prototypes of people” has psychologically destabilized a part of society. We are generating depression or other adverse disorders.

Sedentary: lifestyle Society has very high passive lifestyle rates due to the appearance of products such as electric scooters.

Environment. Technology allows for higher production than the environment can support. This situation brings an increase in, for example, natural disasters.

Difference Between Technology and Science

Difference Between Technology and Science

Although they are related concepts, technology and science are not exactly the same. Science aims to obtain information, while technology applies rationally and orderly to solve a problem. In addition, science pursues the truth while technology competence.

Both science and technology are often mutually supportive. The first uses the second for study, while the second uses the first to solve a problem.

Examples

We bring you a selection of instances related to technology:

  • Artificial intelligence.
  • Internet system

Origin and Evolution of Technology

Since the beginning of history, people have wanted to grow technology (techniques to improve their quality of life). The findings that man has made over the years shape the world as it is known today. Therefore, technology exist since the beginning of the species, although it has not call such until the eighteenth century.

Formally speaking, technology has its origin when a system (initially empirical) began to link to science, and in this way, production methods struct.

Throughout the different periods of mortality, there have been discoveries that modify how the human being relates to himself and to the setting that surrounds him:

Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic)

The discovery of fire was one of the first skills to transport noticeable benefits to human beings. It is brand by the use of stone to manufacture utensils and the development of agriculture with rudimentary tools for managing the land.

Metal Age

It characterizes by the growth of agriculture, animal taming, and the change from nomadism to a sedentary lifestyle. The smelting of copper, figure, and iron develop. The Egyptian civilization credit with the finding of papyrus and ceramic; the Romans created sophisticated agriculture, better the technology of working with iron, develop civil and military engineering; the Chinese civilization accrediting with the discovery of paper, the iron plough, the compass, the propeller, the crossbow, and gunpowder.

Middle-Ages

The appearance of the modern printing press was one of the essential milestones within this period.

Industrial Revolution: It was a retro of social, financial, technological, and cultural transformations characterized by urban and industrialized economic development. Through the 19th century, the telegraph, the light bulb, the telephone, and the automobile emerged. One of the most protuberant inventions of this period was the vapour engine.

Twentieth-century

There was a tremendous technological development with discoveries such as the aeroplane, the radio, the television, the computer, significant advances in nuclear technology, technology applied to medicine, and space technology. The Information and Telecommunication Revolt or the Information Age (1985-2000) within this century.

XXI century

Technological progress (also called a scientific-technological revolution or intelligence revolution) evolved rapidly. Technology and communications transform the industry. New technologies are those that emerge after World War II. Its rapid growth and insertion into society brought essential consequences. The risk is fundamentally given that human beings can control and dominate them.

Importance of Technology

The discoveries and the appearance of new gears shaped through technology were crucial to the development of humans and societies. Technology brings excellent discoveries that improve production, save time, increase the quality of life, make life easier in the community, shorten distances and get to know the planet.

Technology arose as a need for man to encounter particular and collective desires through scientific knowledge and techniques to solve glitches and satisfy their needs. It has permissible for the human being to thoroughly understand the environment surrounding him and modify it to achieve his goals; through the centuries, man has invented limited tools to improve his lifestyle.

Technology has brought discoveries in medicine, advances in access to information, communication and transportation, and the simplification of tasks.

Features of Technology

  • It is present in all private life and cultural areas, such as work, teaching, medicine, and message.
  • It allows the manufacture of new matters: through it, the human life adapts to the environment surrounding him.
  • I am responsible for the maximum of man’s discoveries.
  • If it is well used, it improves the quality of life of human beings. If it is badly used, it can reason severe damage to individuals and society.
  • It is subject to change (technological vicissitudes occur intermittently).
  • Its developments imply cultural, labour, and social changes.
  • Uneven technological development can create social and economic gaps within a community or between regions or nations.

Relationship Between Science and Technology

The concept of technology is often in disorder with that of science. On the one hand, discipline is an order set of knowledge obtained through observation and experimentation.

On the contrary, takes the gen and techniques from the diverse sciences and develops tangible and intangible goods or services that donate to human development.

Scientific advances also imply new opportunities for technical development. While science allows us to know certain phenomena, technology deals with combining and modifying them efficiently to solve a tricky or content a need. Therefore, depends entirely on the life of science.

Conclusion

Unlike the concept of science, technology would seem to be closer to us because we recognize that we live permanently immerse in it. We hear about it almost daily. We even see it in new spaces that we have to go through, speeding up processes and shortening times. And we also hear of it when it blam for the distance between people, their depersonalization, and unwanted effects on life and the environment. In short, we know of many uses of technology: it heals but it also kills, it educates, but it also impoverishes though, it speeds up or complicates our lives, and it brings people closer and further apart.

Also Read: What is Money? – Characteristics, History, Function, and More