Is technology the only one true value added thing?

To answer this question, you have to understand what technology is. For me, the best definition came from Peter Drucker, the original management guru. To him, technology wasn't a machine, it was the thinking behind the machine. The example he uses of technology is an improved train timetable. Now critics cry fowl at this point because if all technology is thinking then, technically, all thinking is technology and you've just made the two words synonymous and made the word "technology" redundant. That's true but that's not Mr Drucker's fault. It's in the language. We use "technically", as I did just now, to refer to the meaning of a thing, rather than the thing itself. It refers to the design and so to the thinking that lead to the design. We use the word "technique" in a similar way to refer to the method of doing something rather than the thing itself. Once again, it's about the thinking behind it that we're acknowledging.

So, is this a workable definition of technology?

Yes, for two reasons:

1. It takes our eyes off the machines. Now, we understand that we don't need a million dollar machinery to have a new technology. Maybe all we need is some new thinking about the existing machinery we already have - like an improved time table. An example of this is "Just In Time" shipping - by organising that supplies reach you just in time for their use, you no longer need to devote resources to their storage, safety and maintenance. Sadly, it also means the end of Johnny Cash's song "One Piece At A Time" because it also reduces the opportunity for theft as well as items being misplaced. All of that massive improvement came from a simple tweak in timetabling.

2. It opens our eyes to older technologies. A long while ago, I saw a documentary about how Japan was going back to older technologies to solve present problems. It asked the very simple question "How is this present problem like a problem that we've already met and solved?" That is a great question. Just because a machine is no longer used doesn't automatically mean that the thinking behind the machine is no longer valid.

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