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Technology as Technics - technology will sometimes be used to mean and refer to material products
of human making or fabrication.
Technics - as termed by Lewis Mumford are the material artifacts (to use an anthropological term) or
hardware (to use an engineering term) produced by a person, group or society.
- subcategorized into tools, devices, machines, implements, instruments, and utensils.
- computers, bicycles, contact lenses, axes fall within the general category of technics.
*Many technologies are involved in the manufacture of an automobile, such as brake technology,
carburetor technology, engine technology and transmission technology.
*Science and Technology can be characterized by describing its characteristic inputs, outputs, functions, kinds
of human practitioners, and processes.
Characteristic Output of Technology and Science
Ex. A program for the computerized operation of a rapid-transit system or a system for controlling the quality of
manufactured goods.
As for science, its characteristic output or end result is theory-based, that is, of the material world itself
including humans and their individual and social activities and behavior.
Technology is that form of human activity that is devoted to the production of technics – or technic-
related intellectual products – and whose root function is to expand the realm of practical possibility.
Science is that form of human activity which is devoted to the production of theory-related knowledge
of natural phenomena and whose root function is to attain an enhanced understanding of nature.