Post #1992729

2026-03-31 12:13 UTC

@mousebot thanks for your answer! I guess your question depends on how you define technology. Some definitions would make a flint stone a tool. Some would make it a technology. Some might argue that it's both. To take the etymological definition (c. 13th Century), a technology is 'tekhne' (art) + 'logi' (discourse): a discourse on art. So I guess some books, if not all books, might fall under this category. My question isn't seeking a definite answer, just a convergence of thoughts.

Replies (1)

@mousebot@todon.nl 2026-03-31 12:29

@ephemeral i wonder how could a tool not be a technology? (i saw the etymological steigler thing in the thread, but it seems a bit wilful if you trot it out like that. tekhne means/meant "art", but not art as we mean it, which was largely invented by Romanticism and became an opposite to craft, which is precisely (also) tekhne. tehkhe means art more as in a skilled practice, rather than a creative or genius one. logos also doesn't just mean a discourse (tho that is one of its meanings), it means knowledge, here presumably the kind one has to have to do the skilled making of the thing.) a book is something one has to know how to make, but i feel that there's such a kind of knowledge behind making things like flints too. (re flints, i have leroi-gourhan in mind, he studied prehistoric societies on the highly-technical and laborious developments of flint hewing over millennia, and considers it as fundamental to humanization and in some ways as a precuror to writing...)

Open ##1992730