What is Technology?

Assessment (analysis and normative evaluation) of a particular technical device, system, or procedure with regard to a defined set of criteria, goals or objectives (e.g. technical security assessment according to the standards of the Orange Book).

The belief that technology develops (see development) by its own laws, that it realizes its own potential, limited only by the material resources available, and must therefore be regarded as an autonomous (see autonomy) system controlling and ultimately permeating all other subsystems of society. Evidence for the first proposition is largely taken from the natural history of technology, its progressive character and the cooccurance of independent (see independence) inventions. Evidence for the second proposition stems from the unwarranted generalization that everything that is invented is ultimately installed and ignores human playfulness, individual and collective interests and man's cognitive limitations. The conclusion is nevertheless supported by the fact that technology has indeed penetrated all spheres of human existence from interpersonal communication, to definitions of the quality of life in technological terms. (Krippendorff)

An object or sequence of operations created by man to assist in achieving some goal. A technology is a body of human knowledge that can be passed along from one place to another and from one generation to the next. Examples of technologies are: a bow and arrow; a birth control pill; a nuclear reactor; a legislature; and a planning, programming, budgeting system of accounting.
The body of knowledge about, and the systematic study of, methods, techniques and hardware applied in the adaptation of the physical environment to man's needs and wants. The application of scientific knowledge to build or improve the infrastructure of agriculture, industry government and daily life. (Technology must not be confused with the very infrastructure it generates). Technology has autocatalytic properties. It favors the use of technical devices and processes even in solving social problems, e.g., by using fertilizers to enhance agricultural production rather than a different form of work organization, by using computers for national planning rather than decentralized decision making processes. (Krippendorff)
The systematic knowledge and the methods and procedures which can be used in a specific area in order to resolve practical problems. In some languages, e.g. French, Spanish, and German, this is clearly distinguished from technic" ("technique", "tecnica", "Technik") which is the practical skill to use knowledge, methods, and procedures in a particular case in order to resolve a specific practical problem.

Technology Assessment (TA) is the encompassing analysis and evaluation of technologies in order to develop alternatives for decision-making (6). ta has three components. In a first step possible consequences of the use of a technology have to be investigated whereby a particular interest is given to unexpected and long-term consequences. In a second step the technology itself and its immediate strengths and weaknesses have to be evaluated as well as its unexpected and long-term consequences. In a third step variants and alternatives have to be elaborated. This definition of Technology Assessment corresponds to the proposal of the VDI (Association of German Engineers) in its "Guidelines to Technology Assessment" (7). (Hornung
The analysis of the implementation of a technology and its evaluation with regard to immediate and more general objectives. Technology Assessment comprises two parts. The first is an analytical, factual, part of scientific analysis of the functioning and of the effects of the technology considered. This takes into consideration in particular potential long-term and unexpected side effects. The second part is the normative evaluation of the results of the analysis with regard to < href ="CRITERION.HTML">criteria, goals, and objectives. This includes the comparison to other alternatives (other technologies or non-implementation).

The use of computer-based information processing in telecommunication and the use of telecommunication to allow computers to transfer programmes and data to each other (WHO: Telematics p. 100)the philosophical study of manifestations of design or purposes in natural processes or occurrences, under the belief that natural processes are not determined by mechanism but rather by their utility in an overall natural design. Dysteleology is the doctrine of purposelessness in nature. (American Heritage Dictionary) Teleology is associated with vitalism. It explains apparently purposeful animal behavior by saying that the action is performed because it will later be advantageous to the animal. Science, on the other hand, has sought to explain apparently purposeful behavior through the theory of mechanism. The notion that an organism contains a model of the actual world and a model of the desired world and acts so as to make the actual world conform to the desired world is compatible with the theory of mechanism.the element of apparent purpose or possession of a project in the organization of living systems, without implying any vitalistic connotations. Frequently considered as a necessary if not sufficient defining feature of the living organization. (Maturana and Varela, 1979) "With the addition of a correction channel equal to or exceeding in capacity the amount of noise in the original channel, it is possible to so encode (see encoding) the correction data sent over this channel that all but an arbitrarily small fraction of the errors contributing to the noise are corrected. This is not possible if the capacity of the correction channel is less than the noise" (see redundancy). This theorem is an isomorph of the law of requisite variety. (Krippendorff)Literally, the original written or printed form of a literary work considered as the authoritative source of interpretations. In cybernetics, data with an inherent pattern, structure or organization through which the meanings are revealed (see context). (Krippendorff)

An imaginative formulation of apparent relationships or underlying principles of certain observed phenomena. It may have been verified to some extent, or it may be pure hypothesis or conjecture. (Iberall)

A theory proposed by B. Russell that rules out self-reference in order to prevent the emergence of antinomies and paradoxes in logic. It states that a class is of a logical type higher (see ordinality) than its members and, because logical types must not be confused, no class can contain itself as a member. E.g., the law of the excluded middle which states that propositions can be either true or false is a proposition and should therefore be either true or false. But because it can only be true (else it would not be a law), it defies its own claim. Russell's solution is that the law is a proposition about propositions and must not be confused with the propositions to which it refers (see meta-). According to the theory, self-referential statements are neither true nor false but meaningless. The theory has been influential in linguistics by recognizing the importance of logical as well as grammatical restrictions on the combinations of words (see language). It provided support on attacks on logical positivism, especially on its verification principle and has inspired inquiries into communication pathologies that arise from the confusion among logical types, e.g., of content and relationship aspects of communications (see double bind). However, by exorcising self-reference, the theory of logical types bas retarded the development of theory, largely cognitive theory, in areas where self-reference is prevalent. With its focus on circularity cybernetics has transcended the theory and essentially solved the problem's self-reference originally posed. (Krippendorff)

The quantity of energy no longer available to do physical work. Every real process converts energy into both work or a condensed form of energy and waste. Some waste may be utilized in processes other than those generating it (see recycling) but the ultimate waste which can no longer support any process is energy in the form of dispersed heat (see second law of thermodynamics). All physical process, despite any local and temporal concentration of energy they may achieve, contribute to the increased overall dispersion of heat. Entropy therefore irreversibly increases in the known universe. (Krip
pendorff)

That branch of physics which is concerned with the storage, transformation and dissipation of energy (including the flow of heat from which the term is derived). Its first law, or the conservation law, states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This law provides the basis for all quantitative accounts of energy, regardless of its form, and makes energy the most important concept in physics. Its second law, or the entropy law, states that in all processes some of the energy involved irreversibly looses its ability to do work and is degraded in quality. The latter is called thermodynamic entropy whose extreme form is dispersed heat and manifested in a uniform temperature distribution. Another statement of this second law is that in any process entropy never decreases. The irreversibility of physical processes implicit in this law makes the entropy law probably the most important law in understanding terrestrial processes including living organisms and social forms. The third law of thermodynamics, or the asymptotic law, states that all processes slow down as they operate closer to the thermodynamic equilibrium making it difficult to reach that equilibrium in practice. This law suggests that the powerful and fast changes which are typical of technology and characteristic of living forms of organization are bound to occur only at levels far removed from thermodynamic equilibrium. (Krippendorff)

The law of asymptotic decelleration (see thermodynamics) . (Krippendorff)