Blog Entry #4

After asking both of my parents about how they defined technology, I began to wonder if my upbringing by them affected the way I defined the word. I decided to ask my brother what he thought the word meant to see if there was any similarity. My brother very loosely and ambigously defined the word ‘technology’ as “Stuff we use that betters our lives and allows us to live long, fulfilling lives”. As I said before, the way my brother defined the word was very unclear and broad, but it basically seems like his idea was the same as my initial thoughts. He said that technology is the “stuff” we use to better our lives, and I said that technology is the “things” we use to better our lives. He could have meant anything with the word “stuff”, but the rest of the definition clearly points out that, in his opinion, technology is used to benefit humanity. He uses the word fulfilling to describe how technology can add more to our lives. Without technology we would not be able to do many things, and the internet is the pefect example of this. The internet allows us to view the entire world and talk to thousands of people we do not even know. My brother mentions that technology “allows us to live long, fulfilling lives”. I am not exactly sure what he meant by “live long”, but technology does allow us to live long, with advances in sanitation and medicine. In the end, it seems like we had the same initial thoughts on what technology is and is used for, which makes me think about how different people define the word. It depends strongly on your upbringing.