I stumbled upon a brief rant on technology by Ursula LeGuin via The Prepared. Great stuff. Alas, I required a bit more than a tweet for me to riff off of it.
“Technology is the active human interface with the material world.”
What I like about this rant is that it echoes my own view of what folks call ‘technology’. I often point out to tech-worshippers that a frakkin’ pencil is ‘technology.’ Indeed, you could write a while book on the pencil and cover so much about science and engineering and, yes, technology (well, I know I could (well, I did, sort of in a NaNoWriMo chapter)).
As LeGuin sorta says, it doesn’t have to be some LIDAR-carrying mobile phone with scratch-proof glass and precision machining and connects to dozen of satellites and can receive push messages from your Roomba when it rolls over your cat.
Clothing, dishes, toothpicks – they are all ‘technology’ – things we make to interact with our physical world.
Humans are inveterate technoweenies
Usually the next thing I say after the pencil comment is, heck, even a chipped flint stone is technology. And humans have been making things (*cough* technology) for evah – IT DEFINES US. I have visions of cavehumans hanging around the fire in a deep discussion on the latest flint techniques and what Harg in the next village over did with that wicked deerhorn to chip the stone just right – just like we all hang around talking about hi-fi (d’oh, dating myself) mobile phones.
To hark back to LeGuin’s rant, it’s stupid to say her stories don’t have technology when technology is everywhere for any civilization (or even non-civilizations – go google about animal tool use).
Technology
Finally, one related secret about my writing: I try not to use the word ‘technology’ at all (ok, so this post is messing up my score). This writing choice was inspired about 15 or more years ago by Ben Hammersly who was taking over some editorial duties at Wired and was going to ban ‘technology’ from everyone’s writing. Well, that’s how I remember it,* and how I was affected by it. And I’ve cut out a gazillion instances of the word ‘technology’ from my writing (and I’ve written a krapload in the past 15+ years).
Rant-triggered rant
So, when I read LeGuin’s rant, I needed to riff off of hers and add mine – she’s so right, a damn pencil is technology; we have always been technoweenies; and don’t don’t don’t ever use THAT WORD again.
I feel better.
*One other item that stands out from that conversation with Ben: matte black magazine covers. I can’t unsee that. Thank you, Ben.
Image from Blick, purveyors of all sorts of fine pencils (and other stuff, too)
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