The technology (of the Greek τεχνολογία, “treaty or essay on an art”) initially indicates the study, or the science of the Technique S.

The Anglo-Saxon influence introduced a terminological confusion which frequently results in substituting for any matter the term “technology” at the end “technique”, the first term appearing more “noble” that the second.

Technique. --> The Dictionary reasoned of sciences, arts and the trades proceeds mainly of a technological will, in particular in its company of composition of a unit technical terminology. If the techniques developed since the origins of humanity, technology appeared in a way much more recent.

In France, the collection the techniques of the engineer is a technological good example of publication. One of the major differences between sciences of nature and technology is that the object of study of the first, nature, is relatively immutable whereas the object of the second, the techniques, is in perpetual expansion. The invention and the improvement are indeed exclusive elements with the techniques, nature, subject of studies as of the natural science, not being able, by definition, being modified or invented by the man without losing his intrinsic character. The improvement or the invention of techniques does not make however, in a strict way, part of the object of technology but of that of the technical Recherche.

Because of its carrying aspect , the word is sometimes galvaudé by the services of Marketing of the companies. Thus, ClearType is presented as a technology whereas it is only a technical , and one sees badly how it could not remain it. On the other hand the Wi-Fi is well today for its part a technology as can the being HTML for example.

See also: technical Training

Origin and history

The word technology returns to the concept of artefact ( techne in Greek) and to that of sciences ( logos ). The concept seems to have been for the first time used in 1772 by a German physicist: Johann Beckmann . Other etymologists locate his appearance at the beginning of the 17th century. But its popular use precedes in fact by a few years the industrial revolution. It east seems he a professor of Harvard, Jacob Bigelow, which for the first time systematized the use in its work Elements off technology (1829). Botanist and professor with the Rumford pulpit of Harvard devoted to " the application of science to arts utiles" ( useful arts ), Bigelow is recognized by certain American historians like a visionary but also an enthusiastic promoter of technocracy. Promoter of a true “fusion” between arts and science, Bigelow will devalue at the same time the fundamental knowledge which is not articulated with a practice concretes and the techniques (arts in the words of the time) which fall under a tradition without the automatic appeal with the scientific knowledge. While promoting an increased sectorialisation of the scientific knowledge and a distribution scientists of the tasks in the field it work it will provide to the American capitalist company incipient a true model from education. It is besides on the recommendations of professor de Harvard that MIT (Massachusetts Institute off Technology) will borrow its name but also many teaching orientations which will do of them one of the technological research centres most powerful in the world (in the field of the Communication, the Informatique and today of the Robotique and the Artificial intelligence).

The word “technology” simply did not indicate for Bigelow “useful arts”. He wanted to suggest in fact the convergence which took place at the dawn of the industrial revolution between arts ( techne ) and science ( logos ). A convergence hitherto compromised by the impossible articulation of the fragmented scientific knowledge and the arts necessarily locked up in a tradition (what the members of the American committee of arts and sciences named “an empirical routine”).

Bigelow fits largely in the furrow of the " Millénarisme technologique" who animates with enthusiasm the scientific and technical enthusiasm of the Western nations (for the historian David Noble, it is necessary to go back to the monk Bénédictin Erigène promoter of a safety thanks to the " arts mécaniques"). Secular Millenarism which returns more or less to the idea of a paradise on ground which is incarnated from now on in the technological advancement (idea largely indebted with philosophies progressists of the history European which emergent with the Age of Enlightenment). One of the major influences of this teleology of technological advance was without any doubt Francis Bacon: the chancellor of England which initiated the experimental Philosophie, inductive philosophy which marks a fundamental rupture with the medieval approaches Scolastique S of science (for which nature is apprehended by the prism of the dogmas of the Church: the method " aprioriste"). Bacon was an enthusiastic deeply impregnated millenarist of puritan rationality (he will remain Anglican: functions oblige…).

Contrary to a spread idea, the concept of technology and its international institutionalization maintain the strong bonds with the European and American religious expectancies of 17th, 18th and 19th centuries (the Puritanisme, the Franc-maçonnerie, the Déisme to quote only them). The Royal Society of London, one of the first academies of the " arts and sciences" (inspired by the Gospel baconien of science) provides an good example of it. Among his members, one counts to an incredible quantity deists (like Isaac Newton), of the unitarian S descendants of the puritans (like Joseph Priestley, the man which discovered the oxygen and which created the first unitarian church), the Huguenot French expatriate in England, Jean Desaguiller (which was the creator of the first cabin of speculative freemasonry). One too quickly made forget this genealogy of the concept of technology which carries a fundamental lighting on the hopes raised in occident since the industrial revolution by all these discoveries. Technology and progress thus appear upon the departure intrinsically dependant.

The technique is carrying change in the only condition of being accompanied by structural changes in the company and its organization socio-policy according to Jacques Ellul which is large the modern critic of the company technician, with Ivan Illich and Lewis Mumford.

See too