What Technology Wants

The word technelogos is nominally Greek. When the ancient Greeks used the word techne, it meant something like art, skill, craft, or even craftiness. Ingenuity may be the closest translation. Techne was used to indicate the ability to outwit circumstances, and as such it was a trait greatly treasured by poets like Homer.

We tend to think of technology as shiny tools and gadgets. Even if we acknowledge that technology can exist in disembodied form, such as software, we tend not to include in this category paintings, literature, music, dance, poetry, and the arts in general. But we should. If a thousand lines of letters in UNIX qualifies as a technology (the computer