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In the understanding of modern technology, we often think of things that promote the overall furtherance of humanity, however in the case of technology surrounding drugs, one may think that perhaps we are not. The derivation of such new technology often has onset that is rapid and outpaces standing laws and regulations, which variably, can be a driving force in the enframing of contemporary technologies of this type (Hiedegger, 20). One such example of this principle which has been more and more widespread in recent times is the concept of vaporization. Now, of course, naturally the first thing that many individuals associate with vaping is nicotine, but this is only one of the offsets of the entire technology and implementation itself. While this most definitely constitutes as a technological change that is affecting drug culture, the widespread legality that accompanies nicotine is not exactly in the scope of what I am seeking to analyze here. My focus for this project is narrowing in on the genesis and implementation of legal technologies, and their ultimate effect on illicit substances with clandestine modification. 

When we begin the investigation of mind altering substances and the advancement in their technology, the use of bio power as the technology stands out, as particularly useful in expanding the influence of certain cultural practices, and uses of substances. Bio power is being utilized through the cultural connections that substances can make with a group of people. This can be understood by analyzing the usage populations of any particular drug and the subcultures that accompanied them. With each youll, find a rich history of usage patterns, and marks that have been made in particular areas throughout the world. Each of these routes and hotspots are the result of the use of bio power, the use of human communication as a means of technological advancement. In this particular case, the technological element is varying across different cultures, but there is one idea that is common amongst them. 

That is the idea that the utilized technology of consumption follows along the same routes of travel and integration as the substance itself. When thinking about the ways in which these cultures are impacted by technology, one of the first questions that arises is around the notion of accessibility. In stating this, I would like to firstly qualify the statement in saying that accessibility depends on a variety of factors that are somewhat independent of technology, such as time, place, and legality. The notion of accessibility that I am referring to, is in that of the ease of consumption. The technology that relates to the consumption of mind altering substances, can appear to have an impact on the prevalence of usage. However, it is important to take into account that this occurs somewhat anecdotally, oftentimes yielding inaccurate and harmful perspectives in the eyes of the ruling parties. This ultimately leads to inaccurate ideas surrounding usage rates in the current zeitgeist as well as the demographics that are considered likely to use. 

In discussing how these kinds of technologies impact humanity and the ways in which humanity ultimately thinks about drugs, I would like to unpack some examples of changes that have occurred in human history, which lead to the impacts that I was referring to. One of the first ones that comes to mind is one the first drugs to be widely consumed by humanity, Ethanol. The fermentation of barley and wheat in order to produce alcohol is a rather ancient practice and its spread throughout the world is shown through the development and curation of new technologies of production. The first main premise that was so alluring about alcohol during the time of its early synthesis was its resilient ability to remain consumable for much longer periods of time than water. This not only is a reference point for where humanity stood technologically at the time of alcohol’s expansion over culture, but also for the plethora of variation in technological production that ensued thereafter. An understanding of Alcohol from this perspective allows one to more deeply dissect the explosion of technology that can ensue after the popularization of a new type of substance not only in humanity’s creation of said technology, but also in the purpose or role that is being filled. 

When thinking about some of the impacts that are ultimately generated, the lens of the modern corporatized global economy seems to be a good first step in analysis. During this day and age, of course the monetary incentive never fails to supersede the rates of addiction that would likely suggest a need to halt or intervene production of a substance, however this point of contingency is one that seems to be widely overlooked. For instance, as these large corporations that are associated with pharmaceuticals have grown over the years, the subsequent technology that has developed along with them has brought greater and greater profit margins to these private entities through improvements in efficiency, production, distribution, etc. So, as a result of this there are many cases in the 20th and 21st century of sustained populations who are abusing pharmacologically manufactured drugs illegally, simultaneously to their continued legal production. Whether or not people are abusing these substances seems to be nearly irrelevant to these corporations in comparison to the amount of demand there is for a particular substance.

The application of this in the functioning of bio-power is nearly endless. The ways in which pharmaceutical drugs, especially, are promoted in America are a mass use of bio-power, in order to get people talking about the medications and the usefulness of their effect. Ironically enough however,  the use of bio-power seems to have an impact that is more than what is supposedly intended in these instances of mass marketing. As humans connect with one another in conversation or any other medium for that matter, there is a segment of the population that discusses the use of these substances for the recreational realm. At first, to many this may not seem problematic, those who choose to do drugs will, and those who don’t won’t. Yet, this fails to account for even more bio-power further down the line, as the word of a substance spreads, so does its culture, influence, and association. 

Codeine cough syrup, commonly known as lean, is the quintessence of pharmacological impact on the populations that are not intended for consumption. The original prescribed usage, being a prescription strength cough suppressant that comes in the form of a dark liquid. It might come next to question how and why this drug in particular is such a classical case of bio-power’s reach in the world of illicit consumption. The reason that it is connected to bio-power is because of the drug’s use and patterns of use across relatively recent American generations. Part of the notion of biopower here is referring to the idea that humans are acting as a technology to accomplish a goal. There are varying different cases where the desired outcome is reached, nonetheless it surely is. In the aforementioned case, as the usage of the drug grew, and its popularity and status of use grew, immediately too did its market value increase, both in legal and illegal markets. This outcome of increased value rather ironically even further drove the status of using or being in possession of codeine cough syrup. 

It is important to note too, that the cultures where codeine cough syrup is being used recreationally, most often do place a significant personal value on having high monetary resources. In rap cultures for example, where having a lot of money is something very commonplace to show off, having a drug that costs a lot of money then follows as a display thereof. This drug’s recent and strong affiliation with rap culture brings in yet another aspect of bio-power, the usage of media. With lyrics, songs, albums and even careers of artists being based on this drug naturally the knowledge of lean and subsequent usage increased drastically. This in doing so, yet again, functionally drove lean to an even higher status and value in rap culture. All occurring as a result of human interaction with an inanimate object and its attainment. Enforcing all of the rules, laws, and regulations that are associated with it during the drugs continued legal and taxable production.

1. Examine the notion of the gift in Sandel. Does it just reduce to some idea that the unnatural is bad or that we’re “playing God,” in manipulating our children’s genetics? Or, even to the claim that we are somehow disrupting a child’s agency or autonomy in altering their genes? If it does reduce to one or other of these claims, assess Savulescu’s attempted refutation of Sandel.

“Giftedness of life is to recognize that our talents and powers are not wholly our doing, despite the effort we extend to develop and to exercise them.” (Sandel, 2004) 

In my own examination of Sandel’s writing, I believe that we may perhaps, somehow be altering our children’s agency and or their autonomy by altering their genetics. If we are saying that there is something fundamentally wrong with altering our children’s genetics, we must first determine what is specifically wrong in doing so. The first of which, noticeably in Sandel’s opinion, is that of the agency of the child. The ability of the child to truly make their own independent decisions and choose between each, in a way seems to be altered by predetermined genetics, in either case, whether the genes were chosen by the parents or not. However, it is specifically this idea that separates the two. When a child’s genetics have been altered or filtered, we feel that we almost are at a point of too much control over the outcome of their life. Of course, the main objection to this is in that of the choices that we make for our children before or after birth, even before we typically consider them competent. Where they go to school, what they eat, what they consume in the media and much more are all determined parentally before we even begin to consider that our children are able to make any of those choices on their own. So, from this standpoint, I start to follow the notion of enframing in which we begin to understand that these predeterminations are less influential than we usually like to believe, especially in comparison to many of the things that we will ultimately choose for our children without their input. 

While agency begins to tackle the nature of the “gift” to Sandel it does not simply mean that children who are then genetically enhanced or modified are absent of this quality. Part of the point that is being expressed is that in our births, we have no recollection, we did not choose when, where, or even what body we are born into,  yet the agency of the individual is one of the first things to be questioned in the topic of altering genetics. Furthermore, I think some appreciation should be given to the ways in which Sandel is saying that we don’t have influence over the lives of our children, as I would agree that this is much more largely the case than many people are willing to admit, or even are capable of comprehending. So many factors are contributing to the future life that a recently born child will have and ironically enough, the vast majority of them will occur independently of the carefully curated choices that parents make about their children in those first years of life. This isn’t to say that these years aren’t impactful, but rather that their lives will ultimately sway in patterns that are uncomputable to the human mind. 

The “gift” that is being referred to here is simply speaking about that of “natural” creation. The somewhat formally thought of as a “random” creation of consciousness from two already existing beings has been held as sacred for the duration of human existence. The idea that is reminiscent of a “gift” here is that of the curiosity of what is to come in the future, whether it is in the form of a present being unveiled or the presence of a life.

What constitutes your identity over time? That is, what makes it that you are the person who, for example, graduated from high school or had that specific 5^th birthday that you had?

What constitutes our identity over time can be very hard to say. What we have left of our memories at old age or almost any age can be different from the truthfulness of a memory or situation. What constitutes, in my opinion, is what residual truths we have about ourselves or about the world, that have been stored in our minds, regardless of our conscious knowledge of them.

 From our own perception of self, the ideas and concepts that we pick up are used as driving factors in our own conception of who we are. The specific perception of our lifetimes in our memories is dependent on the physical functioning of our brain, yielding a rather large amount of qualification in order for our interpretations of the world to remain existent at all. 

If there is anything that is able to be denoted as our “self”, this would appear to be it. When we die, it is the perception of death that scares us, but also the idea that we are no longer going to have agency in this world. It is the fear that all of our own unique thoughts, ideas, and actions are going to die along with our physical selves. There are certain practices that are built on these assumptions such as the Jungian idea of “active imagination”. This derives from the notion that because we are independent beings with our own individual presets of interpolation and processing, anything that follows (including our own imaginations) are purely an output of a system that we are not totally aware of having. What sticks in our minds as we learn and grow in life, is just as important as what does not, and the practice of analyzing our creative imaginations seeks to further our understanding of these forces. This practice serves to highlight the less thought-about fragments of our being, bringing to light what we have not yet discovered about our true identities. 

To summarize, both what we are and are not aware of, in our own characters, are equally important to who we are and who others understand us to be. It seems that the more we think about who we are, the more that we realize our own lack of control over it. While we think that we are capable beings in control of each and every one of our own actions, we are not, and this is much more often true than we would like to accept. It is only with an understanding and appreciation for what we cannot control about ourselves, that we are able to truly gaze into our own souls and take what we find as true.

Benjamin says race is a technology. Race is obviously connected to population. Is race a technique of bio-power?

I think that the idea of race as a form of technology is a long-standing one. It is well documented throughout American history, how race is used for the furtherance of a larger objective. It can be further stated that the overall population’s alignment with its structure is parallel to the countries’ racial progress as a whole. Going back to pre-industrialized America, race was used as a justification for slave labor. With the large majority of the American public subscribing to the idea that there are fundamental differences between each race, it becomes quite easy to see how a racially based slavery culture was fertilized in the earlier days of America. Many of these ideas were predicated on the widely accepted concept of Eugenics. While it does not seem that this concept was created as a means of the technological use of race, it does hold weight as a facilitating factor in the larger creation of the early American slave trade system. In Foucault’s idea of bio-power, we humans are using race in this context as a technology of power. The race that is in control of the overall narrative roughly speaking is the one that can define the rules and limits of each race therein. In earlier America, when the justification of slavery was the necessary means to the end of a more industrious American market, there were those that used the concept of race as a means of biological power, in the human species, in order to organize the hierarchy of human existence for their own benefit. 

In the modern era, we oftentimes think that these organizations of human beings are barbaric and a product of the racist past of our country, however, it is important to remember the various other contexts that are relevant to the development of our understanding and implementation of race. These concepts become especially important in developing theories of how race is used as a technology. While the less modern example seems so obvious in hindsight, it is so very often that this retrospective bias keeps us from accurately accessing and digesting how some of these kinds of dynamics may still be at play in the modern sphere. One of the most prominent examples that I can think of in the modern zeitgeist is how race is used as a technology on the internet.

Now, there are many different ways that this topic could be unpacked in relation to its use in modern society but for the scope of this blog post, I would like to focus on TikTok. I think that as a precursor to some of the opinions that I have formed in interacting with this digital medium, I should state that I am biracial, which at times can impact the way that I interact with some of the algorithms that are being used on platforms such as TikTok. With this in mind, I would like to first point out the obvious difference in why race is being used as a technology of sorts, in contemporary times, versus the past. In the world’s current use of race as a technology, the end goal is to generate interaction, that is to say, the goal of Tiktok is to create a platform experience that is engaging enough for an individual to keep their attention on the stimulus being presented for as long as humanly possible. At first, I did not realize, or have any concept of this at all in my engagement with the app. That is to say that not being aware of any of these aforementioned directives, allowed me to be fully manipulated by some of the divisive techniques that the platform is utilizing. In the context of race, for example, I grew to realize that even though I have not stated any direct affiliation with one race versus another, TikTok picks up on which content I am most likely to engage, and remain engaged with. After noticing this, I began to realize how often I was being shown videos that would elicit an emotional reaction from me, especially content that related to the concept of race. It was shocking in a way, as I began to realize just how often I was being drawn into this realm of racialized thinking, given my somewhat rigid disinterest in discussing race as a concrete topic. Even more profound too, I was shocked at just how effective these kinds of algorithms can be at keeping an audience engaged in what is being presented. 

One other thing that began to puzzle me when engaging with this app, was how this data was being gathered and applied on a larger scale. I thought about the millions of users that TikTok has access to, and how these individuals are not only being somewhat manipulated by this app, but also how their patterns of usage are being analyzed to make pre-existing algorithms that much better at predicting behavior. At this moment, I have already attempted to pull back my usage of the app, as I have come to the true realization of how my inputs are being used as an incredibly small part of an overarching financial agenda to further the profits of this private entity.

In my engagement with social media, I think that one thing that stands out as fundamentally important is the main goal of the user and their engagement with the platform. One that stands out to me is Twitter. When I am stating this too, I am also being very specific because of one facet of its function. To me, this aspect (the most important one in my opinion) is the speed of information and specifically how it is useful to me. I personally enjoy this speed of conversations and links to further information because of how it applies to my consumption of music. In the modern era, music is something that oftentimes no longer follows the conventions of the previous generation, as is the case with everything that is affected by technology. 

One of the most industry-changing technologies of course, is the internet. However as obvious as it sounds there are many ways in which the internet directly affects how music is distributed and personally I think that Twitter may be one of the biggest contributors to some of the modern phenomena that can impact the economy of the music world. Its usefulness is the speed that new music is able to be circulated and spread especially in examples of clandestine music distribution accounts. It is oftentimes my experience that these accounts are distributing music that was not yet meant for release through means that are less than conventional. The speed of Twitter users’ interactions becomes crucial here as it seems many times that the original account who released an audio file for unreleased music for example, is long gone by the time that any enforcing parties are able to take notice. I think that more than anything else, I am grateful for this because there are many cases where I feel that certain songs may have never seen an official release day. Notably too, there are times where artists will act as if a song has been stolen when a track leaks, all the while knowing that they approved its indirect release in the first place.

To analyze what data Twitter is taking from users, I think that some of the most obvious are primarily used to further advance the engagement of the site, such as searches, likes, retweets and thread engagement keywords. As for some of the other, more personal data that Twitter has access to, I feel truly unsure. My guess would be that some of the more technical elements of the device that the app is being used on are sold to third parties who are able to reap a benefit, such as the location of users when active on the app and where and when they are logging into their accounts. 

6. One might argue that the aligning of poor white people with conservative politics is completely irrational; conservative policy literally flies in the face of poor white people’s interests. But, this is, in some sense, what Marcuse is describing and diagnosing (though he’d go further and say, in fact, that both liberal and conservative policy is more or less against the interests of most people). First off, is this correct? That is, is it true that economically less well-off white people align with conservative politics? Second, if it is, what’s Marcuse’s diagnosis exactly?

In the assessment of political alignment with the interest of certain groups, I think that it can be a challenging and very complex task to tackle. The argument that conservative politics do not align with the needs of poor white people, does make some sense to me, economically speaking. In “trickle-down” economics it seems only reasonable that this group would be one of the least benefiting parties from such a policy. On the contrary, however, I think that there may be many poor white people who feel that social conservatism does indeed align with their beliefs about the specifics of how our country and society as a whole should function. Whether less well-off white people truly do tend to align with conservative beliefs, I am not sure, however, I can agree that economically speaking, their alignment with these said views does spell irrationality. As for Marcuse’s diagnosis, it seems that he thinks a major factor of industrialization is the divide between the two parties and more specifically the convergence of the two. The ideas of reason and freedom he states can only come and function fully when we are able to truly choose any political ideas that we want. Rather he is stating that we are not able to do this in the duality of the way that our current system is functioning. There are two large collectives of ideals that you either subscribe to or lose the “meaning” of your choosing.

In my encounters with technology, I can think back to a wide array of experiences that I’ve had. Though none of them were quite as unique as the Dongdaemun design plaza. Although I cannot directly and concisely summarize my experience, I would like to discuss and unpack the different pertaining elements of this object. Firstly it may be important to note the sheer scale of this object given its placement. The city of Seoul can feel very crowded in certain areas and the Dongdaemun plaza stands out because of its massive, looming presence over a large amount of land in the center of the city. Before I was able to engage in an analysis of the structure, I found myself wondering what the process of production looked like, how the space was cleared out, and how the materials were brought in and organized for a creation of this scale. At this point, the structure definitely stood out to me as technology, given the amount of time that was seemingly put into its creation. As I neared closer to this object, I noticed that on the outside of the structure there were millions of cavities. In the night, these blank spaces were completely unnoticeable from a distance. However, at certain random moments, they illuminated in a synchronicity creating various movements of light that spanned the length of the structure. Even more interestingly, these panels on the exterior of the structure were able to display images and videos in a similar manner to the way that a normal screen would, only the curvature of the structure seemed to have little effect on the proportions and scale of the media, creating visuals that appeared as though they were being projected. It was unlike any technology that I had seen before, and it stood as a testament to the capability of the human race to produce awe-inspiring feats of design. From the perspective of Heidegger, this structure would serve both as a standing reserve and a revelation. Its quality of standing reserve derives from its ability to inspire. It is a standing reserve of inspiration for whomever so chooses to feel that it is. The residual impact that it holds in the consciousness of the observer is that the “revelation” of the capabilities and lack of limitation in this field are made visible to both the closed-minded structural designers before it and the latest generation of designers who come after it. The concept of enframing is relevant to mention here too, as it is at the root of the problem that it is trying to solve. Oftentimes in the world, we feel that we have concepts that can be accurately applied to the world generally speaking. If an object is described as a “technology” for example there may be certain things that come to mind immediately. The problem that the Dongdaemun design plaza is solving is that of expectation. It is something that is so very different from anything that most people have seen or can expect to see, that an encounter with this structure is something that nears the point of being indescribable with written or spoken language. It solves the problem of expectation in its very existence. Any preconceived notions of the structure, based on description will prove to be inaccurate in the true experience of observing this structure in real life. The existence of something that is not so easily defined by language is an exposè of how we humans are limited in our thinking of what and why something is constructed. The medium that I have chosen for this project is primarily text, which is limiting to a certain degree for the essence of this structure. It is because of this that I have chosen to include pictures of what the structure and surrounding landscape look like. This provides a context to the reader as they are not strictly limited to the mental images that they can procure in their own minds. For this particular analysis, many may feel that what is being described is something that is significant beyond the medium of picture or video, and this assumption would be correct. I must state that no matter the impact of any kind of digital media being presented about this structure, the experience of interacting with this technology is one that is unique to being physically present next to the structure. It is also important to note the impact of the plaza as contemporary technology. In the city of Seoul, there are great juxtapositions in technology that are present throughout the city, and the Dongdaemun design plaza is no exception. It stands in the Eulji-ro district of the city and is accompanied by many other technological marvels nearby. However, it still stands out, due to the complexity of its eye-catching construction and due to the fact that it displays technology that I imagine many people, have never seen. When I first encountered it my first thought was certainly this. This is a significant thought to me, more so than previous generations even. The reason being is that in the modern era oftentimes there is little that is new or exciting to us, we have seen the use of many innovative technologies through widespread information sources such as the internet. That being said, it can be quite a shocking surprise when we encounter them in real life, and even more substantial when we have no context of how or why a certain technology is being used. This was the case as I took in the presence of this structure. From an artistic standpoint, I was thoroughly impressed. It appeared to be such a beautiful and creative feat yet, it was woven right into the middle of the city as if the surrounding buildings and structures were built around it. Furthermore, this structure stood out to me as artistic because of some of the residual effects that it produced. The first was that of the weather, let me elaborate. When I first came across the structure it was raining very heavily, being that it was monsoon season in Korea. I noticed as I approached that the curved design of the structure was creating a wave-like effect as the rain fell onto it, smoothly rolling off of the sides. This was even more mesmerizing from underneath the structure, feeling as though I was in a technological “cave” so to speak. On top of this, my particular favorite part of the artistic experience here was the effect that the inside of the structure had on the audio. This was not readily apparent to me at first of course, until a friend of mine noticed a piano on the inside with a sign on it that I could not read. After taking a few minutes to humor my friend gently tapping single notes and listening to them echo out into the night, we noticed that there was a group watching us. Naturally, my friend got up to allow the others to have a turn. It was then that one young man came over and sat down at the piano. Unbeknownst to me, I was about to experience one of the most magical experiences musically speaking that I had ever heard. He began playing a classical piece (one that I certainly did not recognize) and its sound cascaded through the structure out into the city in a state that was almost cinematic. The interior of the plaza had a way of amplifying the audio so that it seems almost equally as loud as standing next to the piano from forty to fifty yards away. I watched and listened in complete awe hearing how beautifully this music was being produced and reflected. “This was something that was done on purpose,” I thought. The piano was purposefully placed here so that anyone with knowledge of the instrument was able to share the sounds with a very large surrounding area. It was so profound to me, this idea that the designers had utilized technology in such a way that it was used in the furtherance of art and its appreciation.  In summation, I have found that I did not consider all of the applications of this technology at first experience. With time to take in the artifact, however, I learned an appreciation for this plaza that many passersby or perhaps even visitors may not have, simply through critical observation, time spent, and sheer luck. It is oftentimes in a contemporary context that we address what a technology is by what its purpose is. Moreover, it is chiefly this “real definition” being used which limits our thinking about such. It is with an open mind and a suspension of disbelief, however, that we are able to grasp the aesthetic value of an object and perhaps some of the more complex thought patterns or uses that went into its creation. In the end, it almost does not matter whether the purpose of the plaza was intended for certain uses or not, rather its importance is in the uses that human beings create therein.

The plaza is not really visible here but the piano piece is heard in the background 🙂

Prompt 6: Isn’t this whole thing of Heidegger’s missing a discussion of politics? Of economics? Of material history? For example, he locates the beginning of modern technology in the 18th century and modern physics in the 17th. And, then claims that Enframing pre-exists modern physics. OK. So, is this Enframing present in other human endeavors, like say, modern, racialized slavery or the origins of capitalism? If Enframing is a challenge to bring about a kind of ordering of everything in terms of standing reserve, don’t we need some kind of analysis of its origins (and instantiation in forms like racialized slavery) that accounts for this history?

In Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology he points out the ways in which human beings connect themselves to technology, so much so that many times we end up thinking of ourselves as indistinguishable from it, which he states is partly the case. However, it is with certain definitions of thought surrounding technology that he begins to break this down as a fundamental and objective thinking. For example, standing reserve. In standing reserve, Heidegger draws the notion that human beings are instrumental to the instruments we have created and roughly refer to as technology. It is with this idea that his arguments surrounding technology are given their basis. Furthermore, he gives examples of where these objects lose their usefulness without the ordering of humans such as an airplane on a runway. The use of the idea of enframing induces the idea that the standing reserve hold revelation to its nature. His thought process regarding how we configure and organize technology is predicated on the concept of enframing and its essence in the modern day. The ordering aspect of enframing is thought of in only certain aspects of “technology” by Heidegger, it seems. The real-world applications of ordering in technology are extremely vast, and it seems that there may be certain lenses that Heidegger has not considered. In economics, ordering can be applied as well but with specific socio-economic implications how these facets operate can vary. In the example of racialized slavery, the standing reserve or the parts that are constituent parts of the overall goal or duty are quite literally the same as the source of ordering. The instantiation of which we can think about ordering the orderable is given with the context that the derivation of ordering is a separate entity from that which is being ordered, with racialized slavery this is not the case. In racialized slavery, the order or rank that is set upon the ordering of the means is held to be fundamental to the existence of race, which markedly is embedded in the popularity of Darwinian race theory during the times of racialized slavery in the United States.

Technology can be characterized in a variety of different ways. Each person has a personal definition but is meant roughly to describe the same thing in order to establish standard communication with others. The definition of technology is something that appears somewhat irrelevant in the context of everyday use. However, this being stated the overall implications about how people think of and apply this word, can have vast effects. This can have a much larger impact than many may think. With a plethora of variations in definitions regarding technology some of the more subtle problems that may be caused are not always obvious. The argument could be made that in the context of the 21st century, many may be led to believe that the use of the word technology is rooted in a specific current implication in their lives. For example electricity; for many, the definition of a word is a derivative of its anecdotal use in their everyday lives. This in turn can lead to a difference in understanding despite the use of common communication. 

Expanding off of a difference in understanding of the definition, it also could be considered that at the root of a difference in definition, the use of a word can have a plethora of different uses geographically speaking. With a quick listen to uses of a word around the world it becomes apparent that so many times there are definitions of words or uses of the word that do not appear to be even roughly related to its origin. Comparing how one group uses a word versus another you can see how broadly different definitions can be. With this in mind, we can now begin to think of some rather high-stakes scenarios where the use of the word “technology” can be very critical. Between nations, one can imagine this can be rather problematic at times given the difference in definitions between languages. We often times have extensive thought processes regarding certain terms. Still, it is not always readily apparent that the use, definitions, and features can vary so widely given the context of our current environment and time period.