The Constitution of “Technology”

In this chapter, we seek to unpack the multiple social, physical, and conceptual elements that in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries were assembled to constitute technology as we understand it today. Far from being a natural evolution, “technology” burst forth on the world stage as a deliberate construction of a physical, social, and institutional edifice. The institutional foundations of technology we suggest are no less important than its material or cybernetic foundations. Unpacking the meaning of “technology” in terms of its multiple physical, social, and institutional facets is the objective of this chapter.