[lojban-beginners] Re: "technology"

["Vid Sintef" <picos.picos@gmail.com>]

On 8/17/07, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> That's an odd definition, as it doesn't make any reference to the
> *products* of that practical application, which is exactly what
> technology is in my mind.
>
> The most general word for technology in Lojban (in the way I think
> of it) is rutni; does that help?

Not really. rutni (or lo rutni) is rather physical, an object that has
already got its material existence and thus can be physically touched.
On the other hand "technology" is an intermediary mode or channel of
knowledge through which an idea is materialized into some particularly
intended concrete form. I think of "technology" as a systematized set
of principles of "technique" (that's why there is this "-logy" suffix,
isn't it?). It is "technology" through which lo rutni comes into
being. A television, as an artifact, as lo rutni, is not by itself
"technology". A television is a thing which comes into being *through*
"technology". Clouds are not meteorology, strata are not geology,
hairs are not biology. And artifacts are not technology.

-vid