Today’s post was sparked by the ah-ha I had yesterday about still being a techie because the brain – where #customerexperience happens – is the ultimate legacy #technology. That got me thinking…I’d never looked up the definition of “technology.”
Doing so led me down a fascinating rabbit hole!
The debate about what constitutes technology and how it relates to science is more dramatic than I imagined. Books have been written about the topic. I’ve only begun to delve into the literature so rest assured there is more to come on this question (and why we should care). For now, I wanted to share something so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner…technology’s first meaning was a description of how things get made.
“Logos” is Greek for “word.” (The fancy name for word nerds is logophiles). The fact that it ends in “logy” should have been a clue that technology & words are related. My class on the history of information technology 25 years ago started with the emergence of the written word. The professor explained that words are the original information technology.* Guess I had forgotten!
(* Should we make “OG IT” a thing?)
