Technology- When I think of technology I think of computers and wireless internet access. But that’s a rather narrow and contemporary way to pin down a word that has been around long before computers.
First used in the 1600s, Oregon State University describes the etymology- “The word technology comes from two Greek words, transliterated techne and logos. Techne means art, skill, craft, or the way, manner, or means by which a thing is gained. Logos means word, the utterance by which inward thought is expressed, a saying, or an expression. So, literally, technology means words or discourse about the way things are gained.”
Webster’s Dictionary from 1913 defines technology as, “Industrial science; the science of systematic knowledge of the industrial arts, especially of the more important manufactures, as spinning, weaving, metallurgy, etc.”
Today, Britannica online says, “The application of scientific knowledge to the practical aims of human life—or, as it is sometimes phrased, to the change and manipulation of the human environment.”
Yale professor William Goetzmann, in his book Money Changes Everything, may have said it best with his broader definition of technology; “A set of methods and ideas that develops and is maintained by culture.” Goetzmann concludes, “In short, Rome became an empire because of its financial technology- coinage as well as investment and credit institutions.”