There is no doubt that the world has made impressive progress in the last century and technology with it. It's amazing how many types of technology that man has created to obtain a better quality of life. Enter here and meet them all.
types of technology
The American sociologist James D. Thompson proposed in 1967 in his book Organizations in Action he classified two elementary types of technologies. According to how you are, they affect industries, companies and organizations. These types of technology are: flexible technology and fixed technology.
Flexible technology
One type of technology is flexible. This type is one that can be applied in multiple areas without the need to be modified in order to be incorporated. For example, we can imagine microprocessors. These components initially only appeared in personal computers, but today we can find them in video game consoles, cell phones, robots, among others.
Also, this type of technology is considered one that can physically be flexible. One example would be smart skins, or the curved screens seen on televisions and cell phones. In short, it is the type of technology that allows it to be deformed, bent or manipulated without being affected.
fixed technology
On the contrary, fixed technology is the type of technology that is not usually applied for another service or product different from the purpose for which it was created. That is, it is characterized by having a single use. Generally, it does not usually have any modification that allows it to be updated or advanced, although if, on the contrary, it were to have some evolution, it is usually very slow and occurs over time.
Likewise, the best representation of fixed technology is the pen or pencil. Its sole purpose is to write and it has no other function. Although you may think that women also use it on occasion to do a casual hairstyle, the truth is that it is not its function or what it was created for.
Another demonstration of this type of technology is the glass. The glass is a technology that dates back thousands of years and has lasted over time maintaining its sole objective, to contain a liquid. It may have varied in presentation as are the glasses, but its variation has been minimal over time. Before we go any further, we will define what technology is.
What is technology?
The word "technology" refers to the study of applied techniques. Of course, there are different types of techniques, and even the application of different techniques has come to differentiate some cultures.
The techniques can vary, for example, in the cooking of the same food, which would change its flavor by applying a different technique. In the same way, the development of the most advanced devices such as an Android requires the use of multiple techniques from different disciplines to achieve the common goal.
Of course, since there are different disciplines, this implies that each one of them has its own types of technology or its different studies of techniques according to its purpose. And certainly, there are many types of technology, which will be our point of interest here.
Other types of Technology: Hard Vs Soft
In the different devices there are two fundamental things which is the physical structure and the internal programming of the same. It can be said that a device is made up of two types of technology, a hard one and a soft one.
Even though these two types of technology differ from each other, as we will see below, hard technology cannot exist without soft technology; and soft technology becomes meaningless if hard technology does not exist. We detail these types of technology below.
Dura Technology
In this type of technology are found all the heavy industrial machinery that participates in the development of automobiles, the creation of cell phones, computers. That is, they can be defined as the “hardware” of the device.
However, it is not only metal or strong parts like ships or buildings that belong to hard technology. In fact, they are all those tangible objects created by man. Fabric, for example, is considered a hard technology since it can be tangible and is made by humans.
The disciplines that mainly develop this type of technology are electronics, mechatronics, metallurgy, mechanics, chemistry, architecture, textiles, among others.
Soft Technology
On the other hand, soft technologies are all those that are not tangible. Disciplines such as accounting, psychology and education are considered soft technologies. Actually, the term soft technology covers all disciplines, knowledge, methods or skills, that is, the techniques that help the development of services and products.
Perhaps you have recently heard the expression in English which refers to "how to do it", or in its original language "know how", this expression refers to the knowledge of the person, an issue that provides added value in a company.
The types of functional technologies: Adequate, Intermediate and Cutting-edge
Surely, you have heard in more than one infomercial the phrase "... created with the latest technology", and even when we know that it is the most modern technology, it makes us wonder: So what should we call the one that is more basic or rustic, but still functional?. There are three types of technology to classify this: Adequate, Intermediate and State-of-the-art.
Appropriate Technology
This type is known as appropriate technology, it is one that mainly takes care of cultural, environmental and economic aspects. It is the one that requires fewer resources to be manufactured, which makes it more profitable compared to other types of technology, and they are also easier to maintain.
The boat-in-boat refrigerator is a suitable technology applied in Africa that allows the refrigeration of food as much as possible without the use of electricity. It consists of a vessel buried in the sand with a vessel inside, which is where the food to be preserved is found. Between the space of these two vessels moist sand is placed, in such a way that the evaporation of the liquid in this sand cools the inner vessel.
As can be seen, this type of refrigeration is a very traditional type of technology, with few resources, which has no impact, or at least very little, on the environment and is very economical.
Intermediate technology: one of the types of technology
This type of technology is one that combines or applies both the appropriate technology and the latest technology. In the field of energy generation, biobutanol or solar panels can be considered as a type of intermediate technology, since although they are considerably more expensive and advanced than the appropriate technology, they make use of natural resources such as sunlight and vegetable oil, therefore They have less impact on the environment, are cheaper and less advanced than traditional electricity generators.
There are times when the right technology and the middle technology are often synonymous. The term appropriate technology is often applied to define these two types of technology.
Cutting-edge technology
As expected, cutting-edge technology is one that uses all the power of the industry and refers to the latest advances in science in that product or service. Easily cutting-edge technology can be familiarized with the robotic technology, electronics, automobile, among others.
Three types of technology: equipment, operation and product
These three types of technology are closely involved with each other, but let's define each one
computer technology
We will use LED technology as an example, in this case the manufacturers of LED televisions are the same ones that develop LED technology to incorporate it into their product. In other words, the development of equipment technology is carried out by the same factory or industry in charge of producing said equipment.
operation technology
This type of technology arises from the evaluations of its products, observations of the production process and experience gained over the years. Where the saying "practice makes perfect" fits most perfectly.
product technology
It refers to the knowledge of all the techniques that must be applied to generate new products and services. When we say all the techniques, we also refer to the regulations, procedures, characteristics that must be met.
A product cannot be mass manufactured and marketed and does not meet quality and safety standards. These standards are part of what refers to techniques, knowledge and others.
clean technology
The purpose of this type of technology is the care and preservation of the environment. This implies that it uses natural resources in a moderate way and that the application of this technology can last over time.
In this sense, the same example of solar panels is raised again, which use sunlight to be transformed and stored in a battery bank to subsequently power, for example, a building or a home.
Another example that we will give later is the generation of electrical energy through nuclear fusion. Contrary to what one might think, it is an extremely clean technology, since it does not cause damage to the environment. However, there is a technique that has not yet been applied in nuclear reactors, which is nuclear fission.
Application of the types of technology
As mentioned at the beginning, each science has its technique. This means that technologies can be classified according to the disciplines to which they will be applied.
Military technology
In countries like the United States, it is common for the first prototypes of the technological advances developed to be used primarily in the defense area. As was the case with computers or drones, their first application took place in the military field and they were later marketed. the main intention of this type of technology is to provide some advantage on the battlefield against the adversary.
How it is to suppose the military technology had two important impulses that occurred during the First and Second World War. In the First World War, tanks, submarines, planes, gas masks, among others, emerged. In World War II, tanks and planes were updated, new weapons emerged, penicillin and radar were born, among others.
medicinal technology
This type of technology is based on the development of the complex of devices, knowledge, inventions, experiments, and others that allow improving health services. A technology that has recently evolved in the field of medicine has been 3D printers, where prostheses have already been printed from stem cells.
Nuclear technology: one of the types of technology
It is the one that focuses on the study of the reactions of atoms. Although this type of technology is easily related to the atomic bomb, the truth is that it has many beneficial applications for society, such as power generation.
Generally, this type of technology has been linked to environmental damage. But, this is not entirely correct, for example, the generation of energy through nuclear fusion is one of the cleanest methods of energy generation that exist.
The difference between nuclear fusion and fission is that in fusion you use two small atoms and join them together, in order to form a larger atom. This releases a large amount of energy in the form of heat. This technique is the one found in nature, for example in stars, but it is not yet used for power generation in nuclear reactors.
In the case of nuclear fission, it uses the splitting of atoms. This reaction generates a lot of heat, and unlike nuclear fusion, nuclear fission does leave residue that must be stored in special containers. Even so, this type of technology is one of the least polluting that exists, since the steam that comes out of its chimneys is actually water vapor.
Nuclear technology also has application in the field of medicine such as sterilization of medical equipment and X-ray radiography.
Agricultural Technology: one of the types of technology
Possibly, agricultural technology is one of the oldest technologies that man has developed, it is special because its application is undeniably necessary for him. From the plowing of the field with animals, such as the traditional mule plow, or the irrigation systems implemented by the Egyptians, to the invention of the tractor, they are part of this type of technology.
Then, it can be defined as all the knowledge, techniques, devices, and other resources that contribute to the evolution of field work.
Educative technology
Currently, there is an application called SoloLearn that teaches the different existing programming languages. It is an application that bears a strong resemblance to the teaching methods of the Duolingo application. Therefore, educational technology refers to all the methods, knowledge and techniques applied for the benefit of education.
new types of technology
All those developments and evolutions in the field of technology that have occurred after the Second World War are grouped into a type of technology called new technologies. Cell phones, drones, Wi-Fi, social networks, androids. All these new advances are considered as new types of technologies.
Conclusions
Technology is the development of techniques that include not only devices, but also knowledge, standards and others that are part of these methods.