Technology
Every tool we ever built to expand knowledge, reduce effort, increase comfort and security, or tighten control. (Access may be limited.)
How We Say It
tekΒ·nolΒ·ΙΒ·jee
Where It Comes From
Greek tekhnologia β systematic treatment of an art or craft. From tekhne (art, skill, craft) + logia (study). Originally meant the study of craft or technique. The modern sense β applied science and the material apparatus of civilization β is a 19th- and 20th-century development.
How It's Been Used
Has come to mean primarily digital and computational technology in casual speech, though it covers any deliberate technique β language, agriculture, and writing are all technologies. Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization (1934) traced the long arc of tools shaping social organization. The pace of technological change in the past century is widely held to be without historical precedent.