ABSTRACT
In our contemporary society technology has become an integral part of our daily life, be it work life, private life, or public life. Indeed, it seems that there is very little we do that is not in some way or another enabled (or constrained) through a variety of technologies. When we say technology, we mean it in three interrelated ways. First, in the most obvious manner, it is taken as any purposefully organised material artefact or system produced in pursuit of specific objectives or outcomes. A computer is a technology, but also a chair, and a building, and a knife, and even a sharp flint stone. What they all have in common is the idea that we can purposefully organise the material world in pursuit of individual or collective objectives or outcomes. Second, the idea of technology as a purposefully designed approach to ordering the world, such as, for example, techniques, and methods. Thus, an interview protocol can be seen as a technology for organising the interview interactions, or, a queue as a technology for organising the sequence (or turns) in which events might take place. In this sense, technology, and our human way of ordering and organising ourselves, and our world, are intimately intertwined (Ellul, 1962). Finally, the idea of the technological as a particular way of taking or seeing the world – or perhaps, as a way of living in the world. For example, by understanding the problems of society as being particularly amenable to technical solutions (in the first two senses), or, seeing the world first and foremost in technical terms (Heidegger, 1977). What we might call a pervasive technical mind-set.
