Technology

I'm Sean Dolinar.  I'm a senior chemistry major.  While I'm majoring in chemistry, I actually plan on going into a job in the video production field.  Most people look at me weird when I say that, but to me it make sense.  Aside from these two areas, I'm interested in economics, music, movies, and sports, in particular college football.

Between studying chemistry, using expensive, complicated video equipment, and just living in an age of electronic gadgets, I have become interested in technology.  I began to think when Adam put the greek roots of the technology on the board.  It made a lot of sense that techne had the meaning of 'how to do something' or 'technique'.  If you look at the 'low-tech' examples of technology is becomes more clear that the essence of technology is really knowledge.

Consider a simple piece of early technology such as a spear.  The spear is early technology with which you could hunt.  Making a spear is not hard.  You do not need big factories or  expensive machinery.  However, it does require knowledge.  Knowledge of what wood to use, how to construct, etc.  Furthermore, it require you to know how to hunt with it.

Now if you apply this thought process to something as complex as a computer, you can still see the root of the words have a useful application.  A computer has several different components but none as crucial as the CPU which consists of millions of transistors.  Considering just the CPU, you can see the knowledge necessary to construct a computer.  First, you would have to know about electricity.  Second, you would have understand transistors.  Third, you would have to figure a way to physically make the integrated circuit.  Fourth, you would have to figure out a way to make rest of the computer interact with the CPU to be useful.  This is a ton of knowledge.

I'm pretty sure you could do this kind of break down and in more detail for any piece of technology.