Framing Technology

INTRODUCTION

Lelia Green

Any consideration of technology requires a working definition of what technology is before developing an understanding of its relevance. Technology includes ways of doing things as well as the machinery with which things are done. The layers of meaning offered by Judy Wajcman—who defines ‘technology’ as including objects, activities and knowledge—indicate that the term can refer to a transnational corporation (TNC), to a baby bottle, to canned beans and to human language. Three decades ago Marshall McLuhan noted ‘It can be argued, then, that the phonetic alphabet, alone, is the technology that has been the means of creating “civilized man”—the separate individuals equal before a written code of law’ (McLuhan 1964, p. ...