Most important technologies from history.

[Silurian]

Modernist poetry does entertain people not the means of distribution. The means of distribution could deliver a blank book or a book with random letters printed it. Whilst some people would regard that as art, I do not think they would regard it as poetry.

Impressionist painting is a method of using the materials to produce a painting that will entertain people. This is like a shipwright building a sailing ship to cross the ocean, is that just the technologies of woodworking, rope making, sail making etc.

 

[Lord Baal]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/technology



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology

*sigh*

To be fair, those sentences are laid out very, very poorly, so it's not really your fault you got them mixed up. Here, I'll break it down for you:

The word technology refers to the making, modification, usage and knowledge of; tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and methods of organization

Semi-colons are such useful things sometimes. It's too bad that even some English professors I've come across don't know how to us them.

As for this:

The sum of the ways in which social groups provide themselves with the material objects of their civilization.

The emphasis should be like so:

The sum of the ways in which social groups provide themselves with the material objects[ /b] of their civilisation.

It's referring to manufacturing processes. The automated assembly line is a technology. Democracy is not. As I said, those definitions were worded -or rather, punctuated - extremely poorly. It leaves them open to interpretations which are manifestly incorrect, despite the sentences themselves being technically accurate.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

Yes, yes, it's not a "real" technology, but it's an important aspect of how societies developed from tiny tribal groups up to large city states of hundreds of thousands of people.

 

[Dachs]

I dunno, "technology" seems to be applied more broadly by lots of historians than you're using it, Baal. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England, for instance, might bring up Alfred's or Offa's "organizational" or "bureaucratic" technology, highlighting for instance the existence of a Carolingian-style chancery.

 

[Lord Baal]

I dunno, "technology" seems to be applied more broadly by lots of historians than you're using it, Baal. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England, for instance, might bring up Alfred's or Offa's "organizational" or "bureaucratic" technology, highlighting for instance the existence of a Carolingian-style chancery.

Which is more a sign of the lack of technical training among historians than anything else. A pencil is a bureaucratic technology. Organizing that bureaucracy differently is merely a development, whether good or bad. An improvement, if the former. The word reform is also often used, and could mean either a positive or negative development of an organization, be it a bureaucracy, military, etc..

 

[Flying Pig]

I'm not sure; I think a process or a system counts as a technology as well; it's a way of doing things in order to achieve an end and get what people want. 'Reform' doesn't imply this end: extending the franchise was a 'reform', but it wasn't a means for people to get what they wanted; the Mediaeval system of land distribution into strips was a technology, because it meant that people would have a more secure supply of food in times of flood and the like.

 

[Dachs]

Which is more a sign of the lack of technical training among historians than anything else. A pencil is a bureaucratic technology. Organizing that bureaucracy differently is merely a development, whether good or bad. An improvement, if the former. The word reform is also often used, and could mean either a positive or negative development of an organization, be it a bureaucracy, military, etc..

So if the people most qualified to talk about the use of technology in history don't have the correct definition of "technology", who does? The anthropologists?

 

[innonimatu]

Didn't this use of the term "technology" to refer to human institutional arrangements or "cultural" arrangements originate with the french Annales historians? The first time that I found it systematically used was in Foucault's writings, but I'm guessing he took it from there.
It's a bit weird when fist seen, but if you think about it it makes sense.

 

[Dachs]

Didn't this use of the term "technology" to refer to human institutional arrangements or "cultural" arrangements originate with the french Annales historians? The first time that I found it systematically used was in Foucault's writings, but I'm guessing he took it from there.
It's a bit weird when fist seen, but if you think about it it makes sense.

Yeah, I think it started with the annalistes, but like two-thirds of everything in modern history either started with them or underwent a fundamental alteration after being discussed by them, so yeah.

 

[Tahuti]

Sorry; I'll amend - it has a goal in the sense that it is used for something. So the wheel is a technology because it is used to help move loads; something which has absolutely no function, such as religion, impressionism or modernist poetry, is not a technology.

A religion helps explain the world to those willing to believe it, which moves people into doing something they wouldn't do without it. So yes, religion is a technology, for the purpose of giving meaning into the lives of certain individuals, which is turn yields palpable results.

 

[Flying Pig]

Not the same; a technology has some material end, I think. I will confess again that I'm not sure enough myself of this distinction to argue it in detail.

 

[Domen]

which moves people into doing something they wouldn't do without it.

You mean things like crusading or conquisting ???

Which is more a sign of the lack of technical training among historians than anything else.

This is why I like historians who are like a Polish historian Radek Sikora (an expert on 17th century warfare and on Polish-Lithuanian Winged Hussars).

He has a Doctorate in History, but before he became a professional historian, he graduated in Mechanical Engineering.

So he "knows what he is writing", when he dives into descriptions of the mechanics of various aspects of combat, etc.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I'm not sure; I think a process or a system counts as a technology as well; it's a way of doing things in order to achieve an end and get what people want. 'Reform' doesn't imply this end: extending the franchise was a 'reform', but it wasn't a means for people to get what they wanted; the Mediaeval system of land distribution into strips was a technology, because it meant that people would have a more secure supply of food in times of flood and the like.

Additionally, the line gets fuzzy between a system and an invention.

Four Field Rotation, for example, doesn't require any sort of invented machinery. Just wheat, turnip, barley and clover, something that was certainly available to peasants during the middle ages. But it's usually seen as one of the key inventions in British History.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Can you eat clover? Or do the animals graze on it? I am being stupid for feeling lost?

 

[sophie]

Can you eat clover? Or do the animals graze on it? I am being stupid for feeling lost?

Not for humans. But the clover allows livestock to graze year round.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Oh I see thanks Owen.

 

[aelf]

I think there has to be a goal in technology - thus the production line would count, but not 'religion' as a concept; organised missions might be a technology, but 'organised religion' probably wouldn't.

So you're suggesting that organised religion is not teleological? That's one more rather quaint definition of yours.

 

[Flying Pig]

I said that religion is not teleological; extending that to 'organised religion' was a mistake. Organising said religion into an institution like a Church, collecting money for it and using said money to provide professional ministers of that religion is teleological; its purpose is to administer and spread that religion. However, the concept of religion in itself - not to be confused with individual religions, of which the great example is probably Scientology - is not created with any goal in mind.

 

[aelf]

How do you divorce the concept of religion from religions? Religion wouldn't exist except for the particular existent phenomena we call religions. And, hence, if existent religions (and this covers historically existing ones) are by and large teleological, how can the concept of religion be said to be telos free?