Re: Design changes are done in Fedora

[Warren Young <wyml@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 9, 2015, at 3:15 PM, Always Learning <centos@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> unless the USA people, who have decimated my language
> (English), have a new definition for "technology”.

If you roll back all the changes made to English since colonial times, you’re left with Middle English.  So, how do you feel about Chaucer?

Those who try to fight the inevitable changes that language goes through end up as laughing stocks:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise#Conservatism

> On Thu, 2015-01-08 at 09:35 -0700, Warren Young wrote:
> 
>> Once a thing becomes reliable, it stops being technology.
> 
> Warren are you serious that things that do not work well are
> "technology" but things that do work well are *not* technology ?

It’s a bit of a glib observation, but there’s a serious core to it.

Pencils, paper, carpet, and toasters were once technology.  They were luxury items, manufactured by skilled artisans.  Now they come off an assembly line, durable and perfect, every time.

The original sense of the word “technology” comes from its Greek roots, meaning a treatise on some art, such as a book on how to brew beer.  We don’t use the word that way any more.  In the 1970s, we started to distinguish some technology as “high” technology, then high-tech, and now just tech.

I’m not really serious about this new definition for technology, but it is a useful one.  It is entirely within the normal scope of language evolution for it to become the new sense of the word.
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