Technology Research Sources

“Technology is more than just machines. It is a percasive complex system whose cultural, social, political, and intellectual elements are manifest in virtually every aspect of our lives” (Teich: 1). This brief definition of technology was said by a man named Albert H. Teich in his novel Technolog and Man’s Future. In this novel, Teich discusses these kinds of issues based off technology and how it is considered a threat to our human race. The book is based off three major ideas of technology: Thinking About Technology, Forecasting, Assessing and Controlling Technology, and Reshaping Technology. The first, Thinking About Technology, involves discussing the relationship technology has with society itself. This first section is comparable to Nye’s book because it doesn’t necessarily state one specific opinion about technology, but it causes the readers to think deeper about technology and question their own personal thoughts that they had before reading this book. The second section, Forecasting, Assessing and Controlling Technology, focuses on the concerns of public actions of technology and involve making public decisions about new technologies. This section also discusses governmental mechanisms for handling technology. Finally, Reshaping Technology addresses the current ideas of technology; Is it considered to be good or bad? Finally, the novel then discusses ideas in discovering alternatives for technology. For this novel, in terms of Nye, I believe that Nye may have touched slightly on these kinds of issues but not in as much detail as Teich does in his book. The book breaks down three main ideas to technology and discusses those three specific issues. Nye’s book discusses some of the issues, but not in as much detail.
In my second novel, called Technology in Action by Christian Heath and Paul Luff., discusses the different types of technology. It starts with the introduction of the basic information system, further more into the medical practices of technology, and then discusses the intrapersonal communication in media. Breaking it into further detail, the novel has eight chapters discussing a variety of different topics about technology such as related ethnographic studies of technology, informational medicine and general practice of technology, the actions and activities of individuals based off technology, control rooms of urban transportation, and the impact technology has placed on the workplace environments. For this novel, I believe it to be more like Nye’s novel because it discusses a variety of different issues about technology. However,Technology in Action seems to discuss one basic thing about technology: how technology effects the working world and actions that have taken place while using those technologies all throughout the world. Nye discusses these ideas of technology slightly different, however, this novel uses just one of Nye’s ideas. I think that Nye didn’t get further into these ideas, including the information in Technology and Man’s Future, because, as stated before, Nye uses technology as a whole and uses a variety of different ideas about technology in his novel. These two novels “take one of Nye’s ideas” and break that idea down even further than Nye. Both novels are similar, in comparison to Nye, to Vicente and Vonnegut’s novels. Vicente and Vonnegut both seem to “use” one of Nye’s idea’s discussed in his novel and breaks it down into a more simple way, just as Teich, Heath and Luff do in their novels.