Murphie & Potts Reading

Throughout the industrial and post-industrial periods, technology has become so ubiquitous that it has been said that we now live in technology, surrounded by technological systems and dependent on them. ‘Technology’ has been generalised to the point of abstraction: it suggests an overarching system that we inhabit.

I liked this particular idea, because it’s true. Technology is discussed contemporarily in terms of its ubiquity – it’s an umbrella term for an “overarching system”.

Technology also implies technique, knowledge, and skill: you must have certain literacies for technology to have any use.

From this, Jasmine: The techniques that we apply to our technology say a lot about our cultural specificity.

And, in relation to this, from the Galloway reading:

Culture is anything you can live without.

Eating is a necessity; the way in which we eat is a cultural consequence (technique/technology of cutlery; the culture of eating).