Exploratory Essay Part 2

The first question I thought of was: is the definition of technology dependent on time? I have noticed just in everyday life that when someone mentions the word “technology”, they are usually referring to something new and advanced in very recent history. I think everyone would consider an iPod as being technological, but also that most people would not put a record player under that category. Sure, the record player was considered the height of personal technology in the 1960’s, but now audio technology has evolved to a new level, making inventions like the iPod superior in the sense that they are more advanced and efficient. Just because it has been replaced, however, does that not make it technology anymore? Has it been stripped of the title and reduced to the category of relic? I began to search for sources that may supply some sort of an answer for my question, and I came upon a term that seems to encompass the issue: modernity.

I found that modernity is essentially the “sense or the idea that the present is discontinuous with the past, that through a process of social and cultural change (either through improvement, that is, progress, or through decline) life in the present is fundamentally different from life in the past.” (Hooker) The source then goes into addressing the “crisis of modernity,” which is “the sense that modernity is a problem, that traditional ways of life have been replaced with uncontrollable change and unmanageable alternatives. The crisis itself is merely the sense that the present is a transitional point not focused on a clear goal in the future but simply changing through forces outside our control (this idea that the present is characterized by directionless change we call the ‘postmodern’).” (Hooker) Basically, modernity is what we consider an ever-changing cultural and developmental status of the present world as we move into the future. The term, much like “technology,” is also a rough, amorphous concept that cannot be solidified into one logical definition, at least not one that everyone can agree with. However, it does shed some light on my question in that it shows reason behind technology’s dependence on time.

I believe that my source’s definition of the term “modernity” has a great deal to do with the fact that technology is often synonymous with the present output of mankind’s struggle to move in a new direction at all times. In fact, it seems that technology has somehow become directly linked with modernity and that it is almost always referring to something replacing something else. The American Heritage Dictionary defines technology as “the application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives.” If this is the true definition of the term, then why isn’t the typewriter or the phonograph still considered to be technological? Even though they are obsolete when compared to their current generation of products, are they not still examples of applied science? Because of these conflicting views of what can be defined as technology and also because of the term’s relation to the concept of modernity, I am now convinced that the current dictionary definition of technology is not accurate or up to date with today’s world, and so my quest to discover the truer definition continues.



Source: Hooker, Richard. "Modernity." Washington State Universtiy. July 14 1999. 28 Aug 2007 .