I was surprised by "It was really interesting to work in an industry that was completely different from technology."
Cars aren't technology? When did the term get redefined to mean software?
Cars aren't technology? When did the term get redefined to mean software?
You don’t have to bend to that. People often try to destroy words for political reasons, but in then end, I think, the words often stand resilient.
Our languages are really impressive structures that define real spaces. There is power to learning them and knowing how to use them well.
That power does diminish when words are abused, but it doesn’t disappear.
Personally, I am happy to have words be refined, but when people try to redefine them to the point where they are useless... I listen, and parse their words as intended, but I keep using those words correctly with others.
A decent encyclopaedia or technical school course catalogue will lay out most of the basics (library classification systems are another good option), and models vary. I've been devising my own based on mechanisms rather than application areas. The MIT course catalogue itself is a fascinating artefact.
The levels of technology also matter: there's cutting-edge, high, middle, low, and primitive. Examples such as "Low Tech Magazine" and the "Primitive Technology" YouTube channel are excellent opportunities for enlightenment (and also surprisingly and reassuringly popular).
The domain most at HN are familiar with is the higher end of information technology, itself a very narrow subset, though one which touches on many others through its interactions with communications, media, control, monitoring, surveillance, and manipulation.
Plumbing put us all out of the water carrying business. But without it, daily life would be very, very different.
Google's definition of technology is interesting. - the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry. - machinery and equipment developed from the application of scientific knowledge.
I guess technology is the process of making technology. Pipes are a technology, but most of technology is over.
But it also sounds like technology when a plumber is applying his knowledge of metal and fire and gravity to solve a new problem.
I think what they really mean is “computing”, and mostly specifically “software”; I rarely see any other industry or type of work, no matter how high tech and whether or not the work being done is tech development, referred to as “technology” without some other modifier.
The difference was economics and scale where the work applied to thousands to millions of customers, while an auto shop would 1:1