What Is Technology?

This material is related to The Open University Computing and IT certifications.

The role and effect of technology in both our individual and working lives is ever growing. Understanding how people form innovation and how innovation shapes individuals’s interactions with each other and the natural world is necessary – not only for those who research, establish and implement new innovations, however likewise for all those people and organisations that have to use those technologies in their working and personal lives.

Technology is not a neutral word. Different individuals will provide it various meaning depending upon their viewpoint and context.

Members of the Faculty of Technology are no different, however for several years we have adopted one specific meaning of innovation that shows our own objectives and goals:

There are three crucial elements to this meaning:

1. Technology has to do with doing something about it to meet a human need instead of merely comprehending the functions of the natural world, which is the goal of science. The invention of the microscopic lense was driven by a requirement to check out the world of the little, beyond our unaided vision. This technological option to a long standing issue has in turn allowed us to comprehend more the operations of the world which in turn has led to the development of more innovations.

2. It uses far more than clinical knowledge and consists of values as much as facts, useful craft understanding as much as theoretical understanding. The iPod is an example of where the physics of making a little device carry so much music is married with creative design to make an iconic need to have accessory.

3. It includes organised ways of doing things. It covers the designated and unexpected interactions in between products (devices, gadgets, artifacts) and individuals and systems who make them, use them or are impacted by them through numerous processes. Many individuals like to consume coffee, typically in a coffee bar. That coffee may have originated from trees which have been reproduced particularly for increased yields that support a small farmer and his household however that needs pesticides that were developed and produced in another nation. The collected coffee beans will themselves be transferred worldwide, to be processed and positioned in packages which are distributed to shops that then make the cup of coffee in a polystyrene cup that was produced for the purpose but which then requires to disposed of and so on. Every choice we make relies on, and feeds, an extremely synergistic and far reaching way of life where some have much and some have little.

Technology is a hands-on, can-do profession where individuals have to be skilled in numerous of the following: engineering, interacting, creating, developing, innovating, handling, production, modelling, and systems thinking. But technology likewise provides us numerous products which can be utilized for good or ill or where the benefits are contested and similarly the processes included in producing and using technology indicates that we ought to all take an interest in whether it provides us and everyone else with a sustainable future.

Explore more technology short articles

– British Science Week

Celebrate all things science with Week! We’ve got complimentary courses, video games, animations and more …

Read now to access more information of British Science Week

– In-car innovation: are we being sold a false complacency?

Our brand-new cars come equipped with innovation to read out text messages and let us use voice commands to make telephone call. Allocating attention to other jobs, can cause our driving performance suffering and putting lives at danger.

Read now to gain access to more details of In-car innovation: are we being offered an incorrect sense of security?

– Stress and anxiety in the digital age: the dark side of innovation

What is it about brand-new technology that is making a lot of us distressed and stressed out? Dr Gini Harrison and Dr Mathijs Lucassen explore the leading five stressors:

Read now to gain access to more details of Stress and anxiety in the digital age: the dark side of technology

Explore complimentary courses connected to technology

– Information security

Information security underpins the business viability and success of enterprises of all sizes and the efficiency of public sector organisations. This totally free course starts by discussing why info security and its management are very important for any modern-day organisation and to every individual. You require to be familiar with an …

Discover more to access more details of Information security

Free course

10 hours

Level: 3 Advanced

– The impact of innovation on kids’s physical activity

This complimentary course, The impact of innovation on kids’s physical activity, explores the impact of innovation on children’s exercise levels. It examines the different types of technology that children have access to and the methods in which they engage with it. As part of this discussion this course takes a look at information technology from a series of …