Culture/Technology

This post is essentially a published mental note for myself, I have yet to even finish the Murphie and Potts reading but it’s already just slightly blown my mind.

tech·nol·o·gy

tekhne (Greek) means art or craft and logos (Greek) can mean word, study, or system. The modern use of the word began to emerge in the 1860’s, when it came to mean ‘ the system of mechanical and industrial arts’ due to the rise of science.

cul·ture

Thankfully the reading states that it’s a difficult word to define, because I’ve always had trouble with it. It can refer to encompassing all human activity, to as little as devoting it to a self-contained culture. Many periodicals use culture as the title for the arts and entertainment section. Cultura (Latin) means tending or cultivation, and holds an agricultural reference which later transferred to other denominations.

tech·nique

It’s important to have a distinction between technology and technique. While technique can be defined as ‘the use of skill to accomplish something,’ William Barrett puts technology and technique hand-in-hand as ‘technology is intimately involved with the techniques by which we use it.’

It never really occurred to me that ‘technology’ existed way before computer systems came to prominence in the early 80’s. I guess I was only really aware of the current denomination of the word and the current way in which we use the word as well as technology itself.

More to come as I continue reading…

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