Article by Guru Madhavan: “For centuries, when people wanted to describe a technology they spoke of “inventions” or “the useful arts”. In early English usage, “technology” referred to a treatise on technical subjects, not the tools themselves. Its modern usage — which covers everything from toothpicks to Teslas, and TikTok to tomahawks — gained ground in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as engineering aligned itself with scientific authority and institutional prestige.
The result is that “technology” has become a bloated umbrella, spanning too much and clarifying too little. Nor is it alone in this semantic stampede. Words like “innovation,” “smart” and “sustainability” have suffered similar dilution, sprayed across policy memos and pitch decks until their edges blur.
Vagueness offers alluring flexibility. Consultants peddle “technology solutions” to undefined problems. More troubling, “tech company” has become a convenient shield. Social platforms claim they are not publishers. Ride-hailing services say they are not employers. Online marketplaces avoid retail classification. Without distinction, accountability drifts.
Precision still works, but only when we allow it. “Biotech” emerged from the haze once investors needed a way to separate pills from pixels. “Fintech” spans wire transfers and crypto speculation. “Edtech” includes tutoring apps and loan servicers. “Agtech” groups robotic milkers with gene-edited crops. “Cleantech” wraps battery storage, algae farms and “clean coal” under the same feel-good brand. These tags reproduce confusion at smaller scales.
Language, itself a technology, shapes how we understand agency. “Technology is changing the workplace” conceals the fact that it is executives who are choosing to automate processes and cut jobs. “Technology connects us” hides the deliberate design of attention-harvesting systems. This framing presents human decisions as inevitable shifts.
At its most insidious, “technology” flattens innovation itself. Even “science and technology” — a favourite handle in policy circles — makes engineers wince. It confuses product with process and presents tools as if they have emerged from theory alone. When every advancement, from a hair dryer to the Hoover Dam, shares one designation, differences in form, intent and consequence fade.
The Greeks had it right. Technē meant skilled craft, guided by prudence and purpose. It described something made, named, practised and held to account by people. From technē, we derived “technology.” Over time, however, we traded clarity for cachet…(More)”.
