New Technology, New Technicians and an Ancient Art

The use of technology is as old as our species. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors would not have survived without tools, and every society in human history has had a technological base that was essential to its survival and integral to its culture. Technology is such an essential part of human society that most of it has become invisible to us. I have been in several meetings in which the use of “technology” was on the agenda, but the word “technology” actually referred to nothing more than the use of computers. The real technological triumph of the meeting itself, conducted inside a heated building in winter and far from a tropical zone, was unacknowledged. The fact that we had not convened out of doors – naked and freezing within walking distance of our burrows – was taken for granted.