INVESTIGADORES
VACCARI AndrÉs
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
What is technology? Unravelling a great idea
Autor/es:
ANDRÉS VACCARI
Lugar:
University of Melbourne, Australia
Reunión:
Conferencia; Ute Culture: The Utility of Culture, Annual National Conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australia; 2002
Institución organizadora:
Cultural Studies Association of Australia
Resumen:
The metaphorical universe of technology has progressively come to embrace nearly all facets of human activity: the making of tools, procedures and techniques, tying your shoelaces, making a nuclear weapon, to machines, methods of storage, forms of social organization, and finally language, writing, and all forms of symbolic communication. In philosophy and anthropology, technology has become a fundamental part of the definition of the human, so much so that it is enough to find a tool next to skeletal remains to identity them as such. The purpose of this paper is to trace the origins and history of the concept of technology, in particular in its relation to definitions of the human. I begin with Plato's characterization of technology, then argue for a critical turning point in the scientific revolution.