I.

Introduction

Technology, purposeful human activity which involves designing and making products as diverse as clothing, foods, artefacts, machines, structures, electronic devices and computer systems, collectively often referred to as “the made world”. Technology can also mean the special kind of knowledge which technologists use when solving practical problems (for example, designing and building an irrigation system for tropical agriculture). Such work often begins with a human want (for example, better safety for an infant passenger in a car) or an aspiration (for example, to see the inside of a human artery or to land on the Moon), and technologists draw on resources of many kinds including visual imagination, technical skills, tools, and scientific and other branches of knowledge. Technological activity is as old as human history and its impact on almost all aspects of people's lives has been profound.