Technology and Modern Society

Abstract

On the authority of the Complete Oxford Dictionary, the term “technology” is a combination of two Greek words, “art” and “word”. This accounts for the specific and general meanings of the term contained in the definition: “a discourse or treatise on an art or arts, the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts”. Then there is the transferred sense of technology to mean “practical arts collectively”. The sense is frequently further transferred, in modern usage, to mean the application of the most advanced of the techniques available in the current “state of the art”, or to mean the development of techniques known in general outline but not yet developed into practical and productive application. In particular, technology means the use of techniques involving the application of new developments in “pure” science; that is, scientific knowledge of the human environment and its properties, requiring the investment of large amounts of capital.