Definition of Technology Debate

There is a great debate raging on the MINT mailing list about the definition of technology. Here were my two cents:

I’m in the camp of people who think technology is an application of knowledge. The way I see it, our scientists investigate natural phenomena; they seek to understand causes and effects in nature. Then engineers come along and exploit this knowledge to solve problems. Whatever they build to exploit the knowledge is what I call technology. To apply the scientific knowledge, engineers look at what effects they’d like to produce in order to cause the problems to go away. Then they look for scientific knowledge for producing the desired effect. They see what causes they need to create artificially to produce the desired effect and they make it so, producing technology.