Today on NPR someone mentioned interviewing people regarding how they felt about "technology." They all talked about mobile phones, DSL, laptop computers, etc. This seems to be a skewing of the term. Knapping flint to make a spearpoint is technology, as is laying and starting a fire, and so on, right up to manipulating silicon. Why do people use the word in such a narrow sense?

I heard that same piece, Asa, but I have to admit I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about how, if you are predisposed to dislike something you're less likely to do well and if you don't do well you dislike it and how it's all so . . . well . . .cyclical.

That's a good point, Asa, and I have no idea why that has happened, but it surely has.

I found this interesting note in Dictionary.com when looking up "technology":

The most flagrant abuse of this word has to be "Windows NT" (New Technology) - Microsoft's attempt to make the incorporation of some ancient concepts into their OS sound like real progress. The irony, and even the meaning, of this seems to be utterly lost on Microsoft whose Windows 2000 start-up screen proclaims "Based on NT Technology", (meaning yet another version of NT, including some Windows 95 features at last).

CW, that WAS the point of the piece, to be sure, but I got hung up on their focusing on Microelectronic technology to the exclusion of all else.

Kalleh, your quote made me chuckle, but it also points out how the microelectronic folks think they own the word, "technology!" The author sems to be saying that "NT" stands for "Neanderthal Technology." Yet true Neanderthals had technology too.