How do you define the ubiquitous term “technology”? At first glance, the task seems easy. We are surrounded by “technology” in our modern lives. Surely the term means something like the sum of the many gadgets and tools that are sitting in plain view (for me, that’s a TV, an iPad, an iPhone, a Macbook Pro, a watch, the lights, etc.). Surely that’s what we mean by technology, right? But if you look around, you’ll start to notice that the term is used with a great deal of vagueness and ambiguity. It is used to refer to the products of our creative process, that creative process itself, or the study of that creative process.

This ambiguity of the term is nothing new in English. I’m re-reading David E. Nye’s excellent book Technology Matters  in preparation for a Spring class I’m teaching, and he reminds us that the term has never been so straightforward as we might initially think. The English word “technology” is relatively rare in the early to mid 19th century, and it certainly was not used to mean “tools” or “inventions.” The term was primarily used to refer to the systemization of a particular field. As an example, Nye cites books written as “technologies” of glassmaking, detailing the entire art. He notes that even with the Industrial Revolution raging in the United States, “technology” in the 19th century did not refer to particular tools made by humans. He quotes Leo Marx: “The word technology primarily referred to a kind of book; except for a few lexical pioneers, it was not until the turn of the century that sophistical writers like Thorstein Veblen began to use the word to mean the mechanic arts collectively” (12).

Nye ties the modern understanding of “technology” as tools that were created by humanity to the German term technik, originally translated as “technics” in English. In the 19th century, this word meant “the totality of tools, machines, systems, and processed used in the practical arts and engineering” (12). It was over a period of time, really leading into the early 20th century, that “technology” came be equated with the products of development. For me, the history of ambiguity about the term is a helpful reminder not to settle so quickly on what I understand by the term.

I try to push myself to use a definition of technology that draws upon Martin Heidegger’s “Question Concerning Technology” (Die Frage Nach Der Technik). Heidegger speaks of technology not in terms of the tools that we use, but the self-understanding of the humans who create and use such tools. That is, the tools we make/use are only the lens through which we can see the actual technology, which for Heidegger is the self-understanding our inventions reflect. Heidegger is not interested in tools as technology, but in “what we are becoming with our technology.” As he pithily states it, “the essence of modern technology is nothing technological.” I find Richard Rojcewicz’s book The Gods and Technology a very helpful guide to what is an amazingly complex and opaque argument from Heidegger. Rojcewicz summarizes Heidegger’s understanding of the essence of technology as “prior to technological things–not only logically, as the condition of possibility, but even temporally or historically.” Heidegger uses the image of the midwife to talk about technology and to make his crucial distinction between ancient and modern technology. Ancient technology is the mindset of humans as a co-participant with nature in the creative process. The example often cited is the sculptor who helps bring forth a creation from the stone. As Michelangelo is quoted as saying, the sculpture is in the rock, he just chisels away to reveal it. For Heidegger, the technology of most of human history has been this way. Humans create by working with nature. A distinction has to be made with modern technology, though (the distinction between ancient and modern for Heidegger should not be understood chronologically, though modern times make the distinction clearer; both ancient and modern technology exists today). Heidegger is concerned with technology as a system where humans are no longer working as a midwife alongside nature to create. Rather, humans now see themselves over nature. Humans are now the exploiters of nature, free to do what they want with what they find. Now, we can debate all day about this distinction or where the line is drawn. But the key point is that the tools that we use are not the technology themselves. Rather, the tools we use point to our self-understanding vis-a-vis nature and other humans.

This, by the way, is why the most recent advances in technology become so interesting and complex (I’m currently writing an essay on this, so only a brief allusion here). In the world of transhumanism, where technology allows us to extend life, upload consciousness, etc., the exploitation involved in invention is no longer of nature extra nos, but of human nature. This has all sorts of implications for how we relate to one another and how we determine who is worthy of exploitation and who is not. The point, though, is that the technology is not just what we create, but what the thing we create says about how we understand our position in the world (the essay, btw, is about how we judge a concept like the imago dei in light of what those like Ray Kurzweil think we can do really soon; stay tuned).

So, as I prepare to help my students (on Tuesday) push beyond our common instrumentalist notions of technology, I’m pressing myself to think about the tools I use as a reflection of who I am and what I want. So, for example, the technology of Twitter is cool, but what does it say about me that I feel some sort of validation that a tweet I send is retweeted or favorited? The ability to share my thoughts on this blog is a nice technological advance (thanks WordPress!), but what does it say about me that I will spend a good bit of time writing all of this, not knowing if anyone will ever read it?

So, students, as we move forward, I’ll be right there with you trying to find a more substantive/existential definition of technology. Thankfully, I’ve got a lot of guides to help me along the way.

In the meantime, I’m turning back to my codecademy lesson on Ruby on the Rails, so I can invent more technology (what does that say about how I understand my role in the world…)