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Technology 

This article is regarding the utilization and information of tools. For the Russian band, see Technology (band). For alternative uses, see Technology (disambiguation).

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By the middle twentieth century, humans had achieved a mastery of technology adequate to depart the atmosphere of the world for the primary time and explore house.

Technology (from Greek τέχνη, techne, "art, skill, crafty of hand"; and -λογία, -logia[1]) is that the creating, modification, usage, and information of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and strategies of organization, so as to unravel a tangle, improve a pre-existing resolution to a tangle, accomplish a goal, handle Associate in Nursing applied input/output relation or perform a selected perform. It also can sit down with the gathering of such tools, as well as machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures. Technologies considerably have an effect on human similarly as alternative animal species' ability to manage and adapt to their natural environments. The term will either be applied usually or to specific areas: examples embrace construction technology, medical technology, and knowledge technology.

The human species' use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into straightforward tools. The prehistoric discovery of the flexibility to manage hearth accrued the accessible sources of food and therefore the invention of the wheel helped humans in movement in and dominant their surroundings. Recent technological developments, as well as the press, the phonephone, and therefore the web, have lessened physical barriers to communication and allowed humans to move freely on a worldwide scale. However, not all technology has been used for peaceful purposes; the event of weapons of ever-increasing damaging power has progressed throughout history, from clubs to nuclear weapons.

Technology has affected society and its surroundings during a range of the way. In several societies, technology has helped develop additional advanced economies (including today's international economy) and has allowed the increase of a leisure category. several technological processes manufacture unwanted by-products, referred to as pollution, and eat up natural resources, to the impairment of Earth's surroundings. numerous implementations of technology influence the values of a society and new technology typically raises new moral queries. Examples embrace the increase of the notion of potency in terms of human productivity, a term originally applied solely to machines, and therefore the challenge of ancient norms.

Philosophical debates have arisen over the current and future use of technology in society, with disagreements over whether or not technology improves the human condition or worsens it. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism, and similar movements criticise the generality of technology within the contemporary world, opining that it harms the surroundings and alienates people; proponents of ideologies like transhumanism and techno-progressivism read continuing technological progress as useful to society and therefore the human condition. Indeed, till recently, it absolutely was believed that the event of technology was restricted solely to men, however recent scientific studies indicate that alternative primates and bound dolphin communities have developed straightforward tools and learned to pass their information to alternative generations.

Definition and usage


The invention of the press created it doable for scientists and politicians to speak their ideas with ease, resulting in the Age of Enlightenment; Associate in Nursing example of technology as a cultural force.
The use of the term technology has modified considerably over the last two hundred years. Before the twentieth century, the term was uncommon in English, and typically noted the outline or study of the helpful arts. The term was typically connected to technical education, as within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (chartered in 1861). "Technology" rose to prominence within the twentieth century in reference to the Second historic period. The meanings of technology modified within the early twentieth century once yank social scientists, starting with economic expert, translated ideas from the German thought of Technik into "technology." In German and alternative European languages, a distinction exists between Technik and Technologie that's absent in English, as each terms ar sometimes translated as "technology." By the Thirties, "technology" referred to not the study of the economic arts, however to the economic arts themselves. In 1937, the yank social scientist scan Bain wrote that "technology includes all tools, machines, utensils, weapons, instruments, housing, clothing, communication and transporting devices and therefore the skills by that we have a tendency to manufacture and use them." Bain's definition remains common among students nowadays, particularly social scientists. however equally distinguished is that the definition of technology as engineering science, particularly among scientists and engineers, though most social scientists United Nations agency study technology reject this definition additional recently, students have borrowed from European philosophers of "technique" to increase the which means of technology to varied varieties of instrumental reason, as in Foucault's work on technologies of the self ("techniques Diamond State soi").

Dictionaries and students have offered a spread of definitions. The Merriam-Webster wordbook offers a definition of the term: "the use of information particularly during a explicit area" and "a capability given by the sensible application of knowledge". Ursula Franklin, in her 1989 "Real World of Technology" lecture, gave another definition of the concept; it's "practice, the method we have a tendency to do things around here". The term is commonly wont to imply a selected field of technology, or to sit down with engineering or simply shopper physics, instead of technology as a full. physiologist Stiegler, in Technics and Time, 1, defines technology in 2 ways: as "the pursuit of life by suggests that apart from life", and as "organized inorganic matter."
Technology will be most broadly speaking outlined because the entities, each material and immaterial, created by the appliance of mental and physical effort so as to attain some price. during this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that will be wont to solve real-world issues. it's a comprehensive term that will embrace straightforward tools, like a wrecking bar or wood spoon, or additional complicated machines, like an area station or scientific instrument. Tools and machines needn't be material; virtual technology, like laptop software system and business strategies, represent this definition of technology.
The word "technology" also can be wont to sit down with a set of techniques. during this context, it's the present state of humanity's information of a way to mix resources to supply desired product, to unravel issues, fulfill desires, or satisfy wants; it includes technical strategies, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials. once combined with another term, like "medical technology" or "space technology", it refers to the state of the individual field's information and tools. "State-of-the-art technology" refers to the engineering accessible to humanity in any field.
 


The invention of integrated circuits and therefore the chip (here, Associate in Nursing Intel 4004 chip from 1971) crystal rectifier to the fashionable laptop revolution.
Technology will be viewed as Associate in Nursing activity that forms or changes culture. to boot, technology is that the application of mathematics, science, and therefore the arts for the good thing about life because it is understood. a contemporary example is that the rise of communication technology, that has lessened barriers to human interaction and, as a result, has helped spawn new subcultures; the increase of culture has, at its basis, the event of the web and therefore the laptop Not all technology enhances culture during a artistic way; technology also can facilitate facilitate political oppression and war via tools like guns. As a cultural activity, technology predates each science and engineering, every of that formalize some aspects of technological endeavor.

Science, engineering and technology



Antoine Lavoisier conducting Associate in Nursing experiment connected combustion generated by amplified sun lightweight.
The distinction between science, engineering and technology isn't continuously clear. Science is that the reasoned investigation or study of phenomena, geared toward discovering enduring principles among parts of the exceptional world by using formal techniques like the methodology. Technologies don't seem to be sometimes completely product of science, as a result of they need to satisfy needs like utility, usability and safety.

Engineering is that the goal-oriented method of coming up with and creating tools and systems to take advantage of natural phenomena for sensible human suggests that, typically (but not always) mistreatment results and techniques from science. the event of technology could draw upon several fields of information, as well as scientific, engineering, mathematical, linguistic, and historical information, to attain some sensible result.
Technology is commonly a consequence of science and engineering — though technology as somebody's activity precedes the 2 fields. for instance, science may study the flow of electrons in electrical conductors, by mistreatment already-existing tools and information. This new-found information could then be employed by engineers to form new tools and machines, like semiconductors, computers, and alternative varieties of advanced technology. during this sense, scientists and engineers could each be thought-about technologists; the 3 fields ar typically thought-about together for the needs of analysis and reference.
The exact relations between science and technology specifically are debated by scientists, historians, and policymakers within the late twentieth century, partly as a result of the controversy will inform the funding of basic and engineering science. within the immediate wake of war II, for instance, within the u.  s. it absolutely was wide thought-about that technology was merely "applied science" which to fund basic science was to reap technological leads to due time. Associate in Nursing articulation of this philosophy may well be found expressly in Vannevar Bush's piece of writing on postwar science policy, Science—The Endless Frontier: "New product, new industries, and additional jobs need continuous additions to information of the laws of nature ... This essential new information will be obtained solely through basic research project." within the late-1960s, however, this read came underneath direct attack, leading towards initiatives to fund science for specific tasks (initiatives resisted by the scientific community). the difficulty remains contentious—though most analysts resist the model that technology merely may be a results of research project.

History

Main articles: History of technology and Timeline of historic inventions
Paleolithic (2.5 million – ten,000 BC)

 

A primitive chopper
Further information: define of prehistoric technology
The use of tools by early humans was part a method of discovery and of evolution. Early humans evolved from a species of hunt hominids that were already two-footed,[18] with a brain mass just about one third of recent humans.[19] Tool use remained comparatively unchanged for many of early human history. just about fifty,000 years past, the utilization of tools and sophisticated set of behaviors emerged, believed by several archaeologists to be connected to the emergence of totally fashionable language.[20]
Stone tools


Hand axes from the Acheulian amount


A Clovis I purpose, created via pressure flaking
Human ancestors are mistreatment stone and alternative tools since long before the emergence of homo just about two hundred,000 years past. The earliest strategies of stone tool creating, referred to as the Oldowan "industry", go back to a minimum of two.3 million years past, with the earliest evidence of tool usage found in Abyssinia inside the nice vale, chemical analysis back to two.5 million years past. This era of stone tool use is named the Paleolithic, or "Old stone age", and spans all of human history up to the event of agriculture just about twelve,000 years past.

To make a stone tool, a "core" of arduous stone with specific flaking properties (such as flint) was stricken with a hammerstone. This flaking created a pointy edge on the core stone similarly as on the flakes, either of that may well be used as tools, primarily within the sort of choppers or scrapers.[24] These tools greatly power-assisted the first humans in their savage modus vivendi to perform a spread of tasks as well as butchery carcasses (and breaking bones to urge at the marrow); chopping wood; cracking open nuts; skinning Associate in Nursing animal for its hide; and even forming alternative tools out of softer materials like bone and wood.
The earliest stone tools were crude, being very little quite a broken rock. within the Acheulian era, starting just about one.65 million years past, strategies of operating these stone into specific shapes, like hand axes emerged. the center Paleolithic, just about three hundred,000 years past, saw the introduction of the prepared-core technique, wherever multiple blades may well be apace fashioned from one core stone.[24] The Upper Paleolithic, starting just about forty,000 years past, saw the introduction of pressure flaking, wherever a wood, bone, or horn punch may well be wont to form a stone terribly finely.
Fire

Main article: management of fireplace by early humans

The discovery and utilization of fireplace, a straightforward energy supply with several profound uses, was a turning purpose within the technological evolution of grouping the precise date of its discovery isn't known; proof of burnt animal bones at the Cradle of grouping suggests that the domestication of fireplace occurred before one,000,000 BC; critical accord indicates that Homo erectus had controlled hearth by between five hundred,000 B.C. and four hundred,000 BC. Fire, fueled  with wood and charcoal, allowed early humans to cook their food to extend its edibility, up its nutrient price and broadening the quantity of foods that might be ingested.

Clothing and shelter

Other technological advances created throughout the Paleolithic era were wear and shelter; the adoption of each technologies can't be dated specifically, however they were a key to humanity's progress. because the Paleolithic era progressed, dwellings became additional subtle and additional elaborate; as early as 380,000 BC, humans were constructing temporary wood huts. Clothing, custom-made from the fur and hides of afraid animals, helped humanity expand into colder regions; humans began to migrate out of Africa by two hundred,000 B.C. and into alternative continents, like continent.
Neolithic through classical antiquity (10,000BC – 300AD)


An array of Neolithic artifacts, as well as bracelets, axe heads, chisels, and sprucing tools.
Man's technological ascent began in earnest in what's referred to as the Neolithic amount ("New stone age"). The invention of polished stone axes was a serious advance as a result of it allowed forest clearance on an oversized scale to form farms. the invention of agriculture allowed for the feeding of larger populations, and therefore the transition to a sedentist modus vivendi accrued the quantity of youngsters that might be at the same time raised, as young youngsters now not required to be carried, as was the case with the peregrine modus vivendi. to boot, youngsters may contribute labor to the raising of crops additional promptly than they might to the savage modus vivendi.
With this increase in population and convenience of labor came a rise aborning specialization.[  What triggered the progression from early Neolithic villages to the primary cities, like Uruk, and therefore the initial civilizations, like geographical area, isn't specifically known; but, the emergence of more and more gradable social structures, the specialization of labor, trade and war amongst adjacent cultures, and therefore the want for collective action to beat environmental challenges, like the building of dikes and reservoirs, ar all thought to own compete a task.

Metal tools

Continuing enhancements crystal rectifier to the chamber and bellows and provided the flexibility to smelt and forge native metals (naturally occurring in comparatively pure form).[39] Gold, copper, silver, and lead, were such early metals. the benefits of copper tools over stone, bone, and wood tools were quickly apparent to early humans, and native copper was in all probability used from close to the start of Neolithic times (about 8000 BC). Native copper doesn't naturally occur in giant amounts, however copper ores ar quite common and a few of them manufacture metal simply once burned in wood or charcoal fires. Eventually, the operating of metals crystal rectifier to the invention of alloys like bronze and brass (about 4000 BC). the primary uses of iron alloys like steel dates to around 1400 B.C..
Energy and transport

 

The wheel was fictitious circa 4000 B.C..

Meanwhile, humans were learning to harness alternative varieties of energy. The earliest far-famed use of wind generation is that the sailing boat. The earliest record of a ship underneath sail is shown on Associate in Nursing Egyptian pot chemical analysis back to 3200 B.C.. From prehistoric times, Egyptians in all probability used the ability of the river annual floods to irrigate their lands, step by step learning to control abundant of it through by design designed irrigation channels and 'catch' basins. Similarly, the first peoples of geographical area, the Sumerians, learned to use the Tigris and river rivers for abundant an equivalent functions. however additional in depth use of wind and water (and even human) power needed another invention.
According to archaeologists, the wheel was fictitious around 4000 B.C. in all probability severally and nearly-simultaneously in geographical area (in current Iraq), the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe. Estimates on once this could have occurred vary from 5500 to 3000 B.C., with most consultants swing it nearer to 4000 B.C. The oldest artifacts with drawings that depict wheeled carts start regarding 3000 B.C.; however, the wheel could are in use for millennia before these drawings were created. there's conjointly proof from an equivalent amount of your time that wheels were used for the assembly of pottery. (Note that the first wheel was in all probability not a wheel, however rather Associate in Nursing on an irregular basis formed block of flat wood with atiny low hollow or perforate space close to the middle and mounted on a peg driven into the world. it'd are revolved by perennial tugs by the potter or his assistant.) additional recently, the oldest-known wood wheel within the world was found within the Ljubljana marshes of European nation.The invention of the wheel revolutionized activities as disparate as transportation, war, and therefore the production of pottery (for that it should are initial used). It didn't take long to get that wheeled wagons may well be wont to carry significant hundreds and quick (rotary) potters' wheels enabled early production of pottery. however it absolutely was the utilization of the wheel as a electrical device of energy (through water wheels, windmills, and even treadmills) that revolutionized the appliance of nonhuman  power sources.

Medieval and fashionable history (300 AD —)

Main articles: Medieval technology, Renaissance technology, historic period, Second historic period, Productivity up technologies (historical), and knowledge Technology
Innovations continuing through the center Ages with innovations like silk, the horse collar and horseshoes within the initial few hundred years once the autumn of the Roman Empire. Medieval technology saw the utilization of easy machines (such because the lever, the screw, and therefore the pulley) being combined to create additional difficult tools, like the cart, windmills and clocks. The Renaissance brought forth several of those innovations, as well as the press (which expedited the larger communication of knowledge), and technology became more and more related to science, starting a cycle of mutual advancement. The advancements in technology during this era allowed a additional steady offer of food, followed by the broader convenience of commodity.



The automobile revolutionized personal transportation.
Starting within the uk within the eighteenth century, the economic Revolution was a amount of nice technological discovery, notably within the areas of agriculture, producing, mining, science and transport, driven by the invention of steam power. Technology later took another step with the harnessing of electricity to form such innovations because the motor, lightweight bulb and unnumberable others. Scientific advancement and therefore the discovery of recent ideas later allowed for supercharged flight, and advancements in medication, chemistry, physics and engineering. the increase in technology has crystal rectifier to the development of skyscrapers and huge cities whose inhabitants think about vehicles or alternative supercharged transit for transportation. Communication was conjointly greatly improved with the invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio and tv. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a revolution in transportation with the invention of the powered ship, train, airplane, and automobile.

 

F-15 and F-16 flying over a burning oil field in Kuwait in 1991.

The twentieth century brought a bunch of innovations. In physics, the invention of fission has crystal rectifier to each nuclear weapons and atomic power. Computers were conjointly fictitious and later miniaturized utilizing transistors and integrated circuits. The technology behind got referred to as data technology, and these advancements afterward crystal rectifier to the creation of the web, that ushered within the current modern era. Humans have conjointly been ready to explore house with satellites (later used for telecommunication) and in manned missions going all the thanks to the moon. In medication, this era brought innovations like heart surgery and later somatic cell medical care beside new medications and coverings. complicated producing and construction techniques and organizations ar required to construct and maintain these new technologies, and full industries have arisen to support and develop succeeding generations of {increasingly|progressively|more and additional} more complicated tools. fashionable technology more and more depends on coaching and education — their designers, builders, maintainers, and users typically need subtle general and specific coaching. Moreover, these technologies became therefore complicated that entire fields are created to support them, as well as engineering, medicine, and engineering, and alternative fields are created additional complicated, like construction, transportation and design.
Technology and philosophy
Technicism
Generally, technicism may be a reliance or confidence in technology as a good person of society. Taken to extreme, technicism is that the belief that humanity can ultimately be ready to management everything of existence mistreatment technology. In alternative words, men can sometime be ready to master all issues and presumably even management the longer term mistreatment technology. Some, like writer V. Monsma,[44] connect these ideas to the abdication of faith as a better ethical authority.
Optimism

See also: Extropianism

Optimistic assumptions ar created by proponents of ideologies like transhumanism and singularitarianism, that read technological development as usually having useful effects for the society and therefore the human condition. In these ideologies, technological development is virtuously smart. Some critics see these ideologies as samples of scientism and techno-utopianism and worry the notion of human sweetening and technological singularity that they support. Some have delineate subverter as a techno-optimist.
Skepticism and critics of technology
See also: Luddite, Neo-luddism, Anarcho-primitivism, and Bioconservatism

 

Luddites smashing an influence loom in 1812

On the somewhat skeptical aspect ar bound philosophers like Herbert Marcuse and John Zerzan, United Nations agency believe that technological societies ar inherently blemished. They counsel that the inevitable results of such a society is to become evermore technological at the value of freedom and psychological health.
Many, like the Luddites and distinguished thinker Martin Heidegger, hold serious, though not entirely settled reservations, regarding technology (see "The Question regarding Technology)". in step with Heidegger students Hubert Alfred Dreyfus and Charles Spinosa, "Heidegger doesn't oppose technology. He hopes to reveal the essence of technology during a method that 'in no method orbit USA to a stultified compulsion to go on blindly with technology or, what involves an equivalent factor, to rebel impotently against it.' Indeed, he guarantees that 'when we have a tendency to once open ourselves expressly to the essence of technology, we discover ourselves unexpectedly taken into a releasing claim.'What this entails may be a additional complicated relationship to technology than either techno-optimists or techno-pessimists tend to permit.
Some of the foremost poignant criticisms of technology ar found in what ar currently thought-about to be dystopian literary classics, for instance Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and alternative writings, Anthony Burgess's A mechanism Orange, and martyr Orwell's Nineteen lxxxiv. And, in fictional character by Goethe, Faust's merchandising his soul to the devil reciprocally for power over the physical world, is additionally typically taken as a trope for the adoption of business technology. additional recently, fashionable works of phantasy, like those by Duke of Edinburgh K. Dick and William Gibson, and films (e.g. Blade Runner, Ghost within the Shell) project extremely ambivalent or cautionary attitudes toward technology's impact on human society and identity.
The late cultural critic Neil letter carrier distinguished tool-using societies from technological societies and, finally, what he referred to as "technopolies," that is, societies that ar dominated by the ideology of technological and scientific progress, to the exclusion or damage of alternative cultural practices, values and world-views.
Darin Barney has written regarding technology's impact on practices of citizenship and democratic culture, suggesting that technology will be construed as (1) Associate in Nursing object of political dialogue, (2) a method or medium of dialogue, and (3) a setting for democratic deliberation and citizenship. As a setting for democratic culture, Barney suggests that technology tends to create moral queries, as well as the question of what a decent life consists in, nearly not possible, as a result of they already provide a solution to the question: a decent life is one that features the utilization of additional and additional technology.
Nikolas Kompridis has conjointly written regarding the hazards of recent technology, like recombinant DNA technology, engineering science, artificial biology and artificial intelligence. He warns that these technologies introduce unprecedented  new challenges to men, as well as the chance of the permanent alteration of our biological nature. These considerations ar shared by alternative philosophers, scientists and public intellectuals United Nations agency have written regarding similar problems (e.g. Francis Fukuyama, Jürgen Habermas, William Joy, and archangel Sandel).
Another distinguished critic of technology is Hubert Alfred Dreyfus, United Nations agency has printed books On the web and What Computers Still cannot Do.
Another, additional disreputable anti-technological piece of writing is Industrial Society and Its Future, written by Theodore Kaczynski (aka The Unabomber) and written in many major newspapers (and later books) as a part of an endeavor to finish his bombing campaign of the techno-industrial infrastructure.
Appropriate technology
See also: Technocriticism and Technorealism
The notion of acceptable technology, however, was developed within the twentieth century (e.g., see the work of Jacques Ellul) to explain things wherever it absolutely was not fascinating to use terribly new technologies or people who needed access to some centralized infrastructure or elements or skills foreign from elsewhere. The eco-village movement emerged partly owing to this concern.
Technology and fight

 

Boeing 747-8 wing-fuselage sections throughout final assembly.

In 1983 a classified program was initiated within the USA intelligence service to reverse the USA declining economic and military fight. The program, Project Athenian, used all supply intelligence to review fight worldwide for all varieties of competition to work out the supply of the USA decline. What Project Athenian determined was that technology exploitation is that the foundation of all competitive advantage which the supply of the USA declining fight was the very fact that decision-making through the USA each within the personal and public sectors had switched from higher cognitive process that was supported technology exploitation (i.e., technology-based planning) to higher cognitive process that was supported cash exploitation (i.e., economic-based planning) at the tip of war II.
Technology is correctly outlined as any application of science to accomplish a perform. The science will be vanguard or well established and therefore the perform will have high visibility or be considerably additional mundane however it's all technology, and its exploitation is that the foundation of all competitive advantage.
Technology-based designing is what was wont to build the USA industrial giants before WWII (e.g., Dow, DuPont, GM) and it what was wont to remodel the USA into a country. it absolutely was not economic-based designing.
Project Athenian determined that to construct USA fight, higher cognitive process throughout the USA had to readopt technology-based designing. Project Athenian conjointly determined that countries like China and Republic of India had continuing capital punishment technology-based (while the USA took its detour into economic-based) designing, and as a result had right smart advanced the method and were mistreatment it to create themselves into superpowers. To construct USA fight the USA decision-makers required adopt a sort of technology-based designing that was much more advanced than that employed by China and Republic of India.
Project Athenian determined that technology-based designing makes Associate in Nursing biological process revolution each few hundred years and therefore the next biological process leap, the automatic Innovation Revolution, was poised to occur. within the automatic Innovation Revolution the method for deciding a way to acquire and utilize technology for a competitive advantage (which includes R&D) is automatic in order that it will be dead with unprecedented  speed, potency and lightsomeness.
Project Athenian developed the suggests that for automatic innovation in order that the USA may lead the automatic Innovation Revolution so as to construct and maintain the country's economic fight for several generations.
Other animal species
See also: Tool use by animals, Structures designed by animals, and scheme engineer


This adult pongid uses a branch as a walking stick with gauge the water's depth; Associate in Nursing example of technology usage by non-human primates.
The use of basic technology is additionally a feature of alternative animal species except for humans. These embrace primates like chimpanzees, some dolphin communities, and crows. Considering a additional generic perspective of technology as zoology of active environmental learning and management, we will conjointly sit down with animal examples like beavers and their dams, or bees and their honeycombs.
The ability to create and use tools was once thought-about a process characteristic of the mammal genus but, the invention of tool construction among chimpanzees and connected primates has discarded the notion of the utilization of technology as distinctive to humans. for instance, researchers have discovered wild chimpanzees utilising tools for foraging: a number of the tools used embrace leaf sponges, white ant fishing probes, pestles and leversWest African chimpanzees conjointly use stone hammers and anvils for cracking loopy, as do capuchin monkeys of Boa aspect, Braz
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