I have had poor eyesight since I was very little and every morning when I wake up the first thing I do is fumble for my glasses. Without them I see everything blurry, but when I put them on my face and adjust them over my nose suddenly my capabilities expand and I am able to read, write, drive and do my job. Glasses are a technical advance, a filigree that combines knowledge of engineering and physics to improve my capabilities and solve a problem I have. I mean, glasses are technology, but for some strange reason no one talks about them in these terms. We've all heard someone say they need to get new glasses, but we've never heard anyone say they need to upgrade the technology that allows them to see well.
Technology is a word of Greek origin formed by téchnē, which means skill in a technique, art or craft, and logia, which refers to the science of something. Agriculture is technology, as are glasses, television, the printing press or a watch, but no one says that they will use technology to know what time it is or that they will go to a technology center to make some photocopies. Thus, despite the fact that everything is technology, there must be some criterion that intuitively leads us to use this term in some cases, but not in others.
It is easy. We use the term technology when what we are talking about is after our birth. Or put another way, if we call it technology it means that we are still trying to understand it, assimilate it and incorporate it, and as we get there we will stop calling it technology and we will normalize not only the uses but also the language. It's been centuries since we said technology when talking about glasses. For my grandfather, television was technology, but for me it is no longer. We talk about technology to refer to computers, but for our children this is no longer technology any more than a calculator is technology for me. Every time you refer to something using the word technology, you are implying that for you it is new and that you are still in the adoption phase. And if instead of technology you say new technologies directly, it means that you don't understand it.
We are in the transition from an industrial society to a digital society and we still do not know for sure where we will end up and what the resulting model will be like. We know, for sure, that it is a change that affects our social, cultural and economic schemes, our ways of learning, working, playing and relating. That perhaps power will no longer be organized around work but around information, that perhaps political and representative systems will have to change, and that perhaps we will have to discuss our rights and duties. But the fact that our political, social and economic leaders continue to constantly talk about technology means that they are still trying to digest what the new tools that we now have at our disposal are like, and that therefore they can hardly lead the transition towards the digital society.
Each society, and almost each generation, experiences the arrival of different technologies and each of these technologies goes through different phases of adoption before being reasonably incorporated. If you have doubts, the language is a good clue to identify what stage of adoption we are at. Nobody talks about technology anymore to refer to the heating thermostat or the ceramic hob, but we still use the term technology to talk about the driving assistance systems that new cars have. If you call it technology, it means that you consider it a novelty, but be careful because there are people around you who may get worried if they sense that for you it is still surprisingly new.
Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, already said it: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” If you use the word technology too often, it could be that deep down it still seems a bit magical to you, and that makes us suspicious of whether you are really understanding what we have at hand and if you are prepared to manage it.
Technology is very relevant and having it or not having it can mean gaining or losing competitiveness, doing things better or worse, going well or going badly, but the really important thing is to understand it, to know why you want it, in what way, at what time. and to do what. Look: when all this is clear and mature we no longer call it technology. Escape from technology and fall in love with solutions.
