on technology

at the large bank where i work i keep hearing people use the word "technologist." "Obviously," said a very senior person in IT today, "you need to be a good technologist."

Thing is, despite my prodigiously large vocabulary, I have no clue what a "technologist" is. Having been ridiculously overly educated in a classical tradition, my first impulse is to tear apart the word into roots and whatnot. -ologist being someone who studies, tech being greek for art or craft. Yes, technologists must be people who study arts and crafts! Guess I would have made a good camp counselor after all, though I never did learn how to start or finish a lanyard. By the way, you can thank the TeX documentation for my knowledge of what tech means.

The other problem with this etymological approach is that i know these people are just taking the word technology and turning it into a profession. That doesn't work so well because we (people with my job) don't actually study technology, we use it in a practical way. in any case, technology is fundamentally different from other -ologies in that it's not defined as a body of knowledge. a biologist for example, works to improve the body of knowledge that is biology. there's a temptation to say that what i do is analogous to a doctor in terms of biology, but that already has a name: engineering. fact of the matter is that the precise area i work in is kind of engineering, but plenty of people who are being called "technologists" are application developers which is just not the same.

as an aside, many companies are actively in the practice of transforming sciences, that is to say, ologies, into industries. scientists no longer produce knowledge, they produce, well, product. of course, at that point it's no longer science but instead technology.

thing is, pretty much everyone uses technology in some form or other in his job. teachers use chalk, salesman have phones, policeman have nightsticks, chefs have knives. and mandolins. and silicone gloves and stand mixers and salamanders and man i need to stop watching food network. point is, i'm not sure why i'm a technologist and mario batali's sous chef isn't.

going back to the root of technology, i would posit that artists would have to be the ultimate users of technology. sculptors have taken the hardest rock and crude metal tools and created that which looks as if it lives and breathes. painters take oil and pigment and create all sorts of images, from sunday in the park to de stijl to happy trees. in other words, artists take technology and bend it to their whim to produce greatness. pretty much the only art i can think of that is pretty much unaltered because of technology is writing. by the way i like it when people leave com... oh.