Technology is the use of tools or machines to solve problems and meet needs. It includes both tangible items, such as hand tools and machinery, as well as immaterial ones, such as software and business methods. It can be applied in any field of human endeavor, such as health, education, transportation, communication, manufacturing and entertainment.

In the broadest sense, technology is an ongoing attempt to bring the world closer to how one wishes it to be. This may be a pragmatic exercise in calculating different possible means towards an end already determined, or it can be deliberating on what that end should be. Joseph Dunne notes two’sharply diverging traditions’ of talking about technology:

The first is the instrumental approach, which tends to rely on language of means and ends, and portrays technology as narrow technical rationality, uncreative, and devoid of values. It ‘portrays technological development as a matter of moving an existent world closer to some pre-determined goal, and is associated with such writers as Aristotle, Hugh of St Victor, Johann Beckmann and Talcott Parsons.

The second tradition is that of a ‘technology of values’, which takes the view that it is important to consider how technologies are developed and used. This is associated with such writers as William James, Alfred North Whitehead and John McLuhan, and emphasizes the role of culture in technology. It focuses on the need to consider issues of value in deciding how technologies should be created and used, and on the way in which they are’socialized’ into societies.