Technology in the Modern World

Abstract

The broad field of automation covers, inter alia, my first reaction on being awarded difficult but absorbing task of addressing you on Technology in Modem World. I turned automatically and confidently to Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1962 and read avidly every reference indexed under Here it is, verbatim: Moreover, settled agricultural life needed more tools, at first of stone. Thus a professional technology developed. The rest is silence. I moved my calendar back to 1961, not without gain. For Encyclopaedia Britannica 1961 said this: Moreover, settled agricultural life needed more tools, at first of stone. Thus a professional technology developed. Both, however, do condescend to particular in describing technological as the higher levels at which advanced knowledge of theory is important -this in contrast to technical education directed primarily at acquirement of skills in techniques. Compare these fragments, however, with their counterpart in great Eleventh of 1910-11, Philip Magnus on Technical Education together with biographic note on Johann Beckmann (1739-1811) who-in 1772-invented title of Scientific Technology. We are, I hope, going to change all this imbalance. As an unrepentant technologist, I hereby dedicate all effort for which anyone is prepared adequately to pay me, to giving technology its place in sun. In sunshine, that is, of an Encyclopaedia Britannica which should surpass even high standards of an epoch when E signified Edinburgh as well as Encyclopaedia. I do not attempt difficult task of defining my terms; I can approach them only by indirection. Science and technology are Gemini of (not always heavenly) conceptual constellations of human mind. They are far from identical twins, and endless confusion may be generated by failure to recognize their sharply differentiated identities. They are, however, like Siamese twins; they share a common blood stream, but are divergent in their outlook on their common world. This divergence of outlook denies them status of heavenly twins-science may pretend to adjective, but technology is of earth, earthy.