@mayintoronto a response to some of your responses: to me "tech" and "technology" are two very different things. reading, CMOS integrated circuits, and corn are technologies. the iphone is tech. "tech" to me implies a social/ideological/economic movement which is specifically modern in a way "technology" is not and which lacks the inherent positivity i would view "technology" with.

@mayintoronto i'm afraid to ponder this

@mayintoronto tech is that without which I could think of a thing and describe it, but not do it.

A sharp kitchen knife is tech, as is a bicycle, a shell script, an operating system kernel, a database engine, a self-adaptive automatic process provisioning service configuration, a zipper.

Good tech, once I gain it and learn it properly, gives me new capabilities that I simply incorporate into the set of things that I think of myself as being able to do.

@mayintoronto “Technology” in my book is any application of knowledge to manipulate the world. Curious however if you have a mental reference for “tech” as distinct from “technology.” I often do use the abbreviated form to refer to especially complex manufacturing technology of physical artifacts, like a smartphone (and all its attendant components), or as a synecdoche for the industry which produces said.

@mayintoronto

There is too much emphasis on high technology and not enough emphasis on appropriate technology.

@mayintoronto tech is whatever means exist outside one’s own species for promoting the wellbeing of those in that species. (Had to generalize this a bit bc nonhuman species use tech too.)

@mayintoronto I think “technology is applied ideas” is a handy framing and jotted something down about this for myself the other day! (“Tech” probably has a different connotation for people than “technology”, though, and that seems pretty subjective and maybe even aesthetic-driven?)
https://www.mostol.dev/post/202506051627/

@mayintoronto I think it's a term that has been almost entirely relegated to use as an all-encompassing shorthand for interfacing with those not in the know. I don't ever use the term "tech" in a conversation with someone that is on the level of the particulars of a certain subject, with mutual understanding. Like, if I'm talking to someone about how we should configure our artisanal OpenBSD VM, the term "tech" doesn't come up. But if I head to explain to my mom, or a techbro, what I was doing in relation to the artisanal OpenBSD VM, I might summarize much of it with the word "tech".

@mayintoronto "tech" == our [community] combined knowledge to reproduce results

Substitute [community] as needed

@mayintoronto Originally, people trying to use machinery to solve social problems, and failing (obviously).

Now, a financial vehicle disconnected from any real-world problems.