#askfedi - What is "tech"?
Would love to get some perspectives from people outside of "tech" too.
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@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 (my answer is informed by the dreadful feeling of my personal capabilities being extended by some type of technology that the provider then, for some business or jurisdictional reason, took away. I can make my peace with old age and injury gradually diminishing my capabilities as a human, but I'll be damned if I ever accept that vulnerability in the name of profit for someone else. The "tech industry" is something for which I have, to put it very mildly, little affection indeed.)
@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.
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".
Technology is the broad umbrella of new things that make our lives different from before. It's relative to time. It has an impact on society.
The harnessing of fire is technology. It's generally considered an understood field and old technology.
Knitting is technology. It's both past and current technology as we find new ways to explore how fabrics work with novel materials.
Facebook is technology. It lets me talk to my elderly friends 1300 km away, and also concentrates and distributes enough hate to have caused at least 1 genocide.
A group that distributes anarchist zines is technology, specifically the human organization underlying this group to help it serve its purpose.
Plant-based meat substitutes are technology in both food sciences and materials. It's all VERY COOL.
"Tech" is an appropriated marketing term to strip human impact from the new things we produce.
"Tech workers" are workers, caught up in the trap, being more and more disenfranchised as "Tech" the capitalist industry strays from positive human and societal impact.
@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.
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