technology.org.uk

Technology – how far can it go?

Technology is a word that is much used in these fast advancing days, but can we really define what technology is? The range of products and devices covered by the term technology is broad and varied, and as such we can use the label to describe anything that is either new or advanced.

Given those parameters, it is difficult to dismiss much as being not defined as technology; historically, of course, what was considered as a technological advancement many years ago – the camera, for instance, in the late 1800’s, or the Hot Air Balloon more than a century before that – may have been technology, as a definition, in a different manner to that we think of today.

However, even something as established as the camera is still talked of in the realms of technology, as advances into the digital age have rendered older models obsolete, and technology has very much changed the face of photography as it has many other areas of our lives.

Everyday technology – generally electronic – is an essential part of our lives in the 21^st century; where would we be, after all, without electricity itself, possibly the most important example of technology becoming the norm that we can point to? Where would we be without the internal combustion engine, or without the highly advanced computers that almost every home possesses these days?

Life without technology is not possible; advanced technology is simply a description applied to developments of existing elements of the technological world. We advance by nature, and by technology, and we build up our world with both.