Defining Technology
- Vasiliki Victoria Rombos
- Jan 21, 2017
- 2 min read
On the first day of my Children and Technology course, our professor started the class by asking us, "What is Technology?". Immediately my mind went to devices such as iPads, cell phones and computers. Most of my classmates did the same. However after sharing our thoughts with the class and watching a brief video, we realized that technology is so much more than the digital gadgets we use on a daily basis, it's everything created by humans in an effort to improve daily life (Robinson, 2013). It's the chair that you're sitting on, the clothes on your back, and the phone in your hand. It was a whole new perspective that I had forgotten to consider. In a society where digital devices are being altered and improved so rapidly, we've forgotten about the early technology that helped us advance to this point.




All images free from Wix (2017)
While searching for the official definition of technology, I came across the same definition multiple times, but I felt that it didn't accurately represent how I viewed technology, until I found a website where it had broken technology down into two categories: analog and digital (Woodford, 2016). They described analog technology simply, an item that completes the task it was created for without "processing numbers electronically" (Woodford, 2016). However, digital technology was more complex, because rather than store information such as words or numbers, it first converts the information into numbers and stores those instead (Woodford, 2016). Defining it like this represents the gap between technology and how it has advanced. It also explains why we often associate technology with primarily digital devices, because we are so accustomed to the most recent technological advancements.

Since technology is so relevant in daily life, we've even begun using terms to describe the digital separation between our generations, digital immigrants and digital natives. Digital immigrants are individuals who grew up in a time where digital technology had not yet advanced, whereas digital natives are individuals who have grown up with digital technology at their fingertips.
Image free from Wix (2017)
We are currently in a time period where digital technology is improving daily, making it a crucial part of the lives of digital natives. Future posts in this blog will focus on digital natives and how the digital technology surrounding them with impact their development, upbringing, and education.
GIF from Wix (2017)
Word Count: 410
References:
Robinson, Jon. (2013, August 13). What is Technology? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDP2_xOZewo
Woodford, Chris. (2016, December 11). Analog and Digital. [Website]. Retrieved from http://www.explainthatstuff.com/analog-and-digital.html
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