“Can We Define Technology,” a subsection of David Nye’s Technology Matters, explores in part the confusing relationship between scientific discovery and technological advancement, with “technology” being an ill-defined term that has taken many forms over the course of human history. One segment of the text that particularly caught my eye was Nye’s well-founded assertion that “The Romans valued what we now call technology more highly than the Greeks” (8). The Greeks, for their part, appear to have placed a higher value on intellectual sciences. But if we take the Greeks embody science and the Romans technology, where does that leave us?
At first, one might be tempted to suggest that our society today has struck a profitable middle ground between scientific advancement and technological development. Indeed, in nearly every aspect, our modernized world is ideally positioned to take full advantage of these two topics. Earth possesses the population (plenty of workers), the expertise (brilliant minds and compilations of amassed knowledge), and the interconnectedness (easy sharing of information) to make amazing strides in the sciences whilst continuing to modernize through immense technological breakthroughs. And we do achieve these things. Barely a day goes by when my iPhone – itself an impressive feat of technological engineering – does not notify me of the emergence of some amazing new scientific discovery. From the findings of new celestial bodies to never-before-seen farming techniques, it feels as though our world is one in which science and technology never slow down. And yet, I would argue that both science and technology often go surprisingly unrecognized in our society today. The Greeks touted intellectual pursuits, the Romans admired feats of engineering, yet we, living in 2020, seem to undervalue both of these areas.
Without delving too deeply into a tangent, this brings up Kuhn’s topic of paradigm shifts. As Kuhn’s reading tells us, period-defining shifts in science and technology do not simply come around every week. One cannot expect each and every scientific and technological development to revolutionize our day-to-day lives. Furthermore, it is often not until well after a particular discovery is first introduced that we come to realize its true importance to human development. Will future generations look back on our feats with newfound appreciation for the work of the 21st century’s brightest minds? Perhaps. Nonetheless, I am still surprised by the general apathy which greeted many of the developments that occurred within my lifetime.
Why could this be? Do we hype up every minute scientific and technological development to the point that these occurrences lose their value? Have clickbait news outlets, seeking solely to generate internet traffic with eye-catching headlines, desensitized us to the hard work of scientific minds around the globe? On the whole, I would say that the answer is probably yes. And this is not to discount the millions of scientifically-minded individuals dedicated to the preservation and expansion of human knowledge in our modern era; I believe that it is our general, societal response to scientific and technological progress which leaves much to be desired. We could well be living through a Kuhnian paradigm shift, and most of us wouldn’t even know it.