Language-Part Three: Is Language Technology?
Fritjof Capra in The Web of Life, (Anchor Books, 1996) calls
photosynthesis, fermentation, nitrogen fixing in the soil, rapid motion, even
breathing oxygen ‘biotechnologies’ invented by our long-lived friends, the
bacteria (pgs. 236-245). Their inventions, or technologies, have formed the
foundational basis of all life on our planet. These technologies have evolved
over great expanses of time; bacteria have been on the earth for 3.5 billion
years.
Thus, using Capra’s logic, the natural evolution of language as a tool, and
perhaps even a survival skill-rather than the applied science of
technological invention-would certainly fit the definition of technology;
though we might more accurately call it social or cultural technology.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines technology like this: the body of
knowledge available to a civilization that is of use in fashioning
implements, practicing manual arts and skills, and extracting or collecting
materials. [Greek tekhnologia, systematic treatment of an art or craft :
tekhnT, skill + Greek logos, speech, word, reason.]
If word, reason, speech itself is present in the roots of technology, then
language provides a foundation for technology, and is, one could argue, the
basis for all technology.
In case there are those of you still ready to argue my point, one last
anecdote. John Perry Barlow dropped by the house the other evening to pick up
a friend for dinner (he arrived on our porch and his cell phone immediately
began ringing) and threw in his two cents. “Hey, John” I said, “ Is language
a technology?” His answer was immediate and definitive, “Absolutely!”
Thus ends today’s reading.
*
OK, so language is a technology, now what?-next week we begin a discussion of
the poetics of high-tech entreprenuership.
