Technology - then and now

An interesting historical look at Nautilus:

Most Tech Today Would be Frivolous to Ancient Scientists
Surrounded by advanced achievements in medicine, space exploration, and robotics, people can be forgiven for thinking our time boasts the best technology. So I was startled last year to hear Sarah Stroup, a professor of classics at the University of Washington, Seattle, give a speech called “Robots, Space Exploration, Death Rays, Brain Surgery, and Nanotechnology: STEMM in the Ancient World.” Stroup has created a college course integrating classics and science to show how 2,000 year-old Greek and Roman STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) underlie and illuminate the sciences today.

Stroup starts with robotics. The Greeks made self-acting machinery such as an automaton theater, a first step toward building a real robot, and they imagined a mythological one. Talos, a bronze being made by the god Hephaestus (later the Roman Vulcan) patrolled the island of Crete and threw rocks at threatening ships, anticipating today’s development of intelligent battlefield weaponry that chooses its own targets. In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle foresaw other implications of intelligent machines when he wrote, “If every instrument could accomplish its own work… chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves,” as is now happening when robots and artificial intelligence replace people.

The origins of the word "technology"

“Technology” comes from the Greek τέχνη, techne, which designates art, skill, or cunning. In Greek, it can be applied to sculpture, to metallurgy, to any craft or a method or set of rules for doing anything. The Latin translation of τέχνη would be ars, from which we get our word art. I find it amusing that moderns tend to imagine technology and art as opposites, when in fact the root words—techne and ars—mean exactly the same thing. In terms of τεχνολογία—technologia—it means specifically a systematic treatment of grammar. The modern sense of the word technology is not found in the ancient word. 

A fascinating read.