The term technology derives from the Greek τεχνολογια [technologhia], literally "discourse on art", where art means knowing how to do. It designates the multidisciplinary area of research and development of solutions, linked above all to production processes.
In the most classic sense, technology deals with the study of the procedures and equipment necessary for the transformation of a given raw material into an industrial product, starting from the principles of science, to arrive at technique, which instead deals specifically with the practical methods of processing; in practice, with a view to creating a product, science provides global knowledge on the subject, technology tells what it takes to know to do it, technique explains how to do it.
Engineering adds human characteristics such as imagination, judgment and intellectual discipline to pre-existing knowledge to use technology in safe, efficient and repeatable ways. Thanks to technological innovation there has been a strong increase in production. Technological progress has also significantly improved people's standard of living, many onerous jobs have been eliminated. Innovation has not always been without side effects, such as environmental ones. All this has generated numerous debates. Another source of concern is that, with the rapid advance of technology, futurists fear that in the future a mechanical intelligence superior to that of humans could be created.
Sometimes, the entry of a more modern technology is intentionally delayed to commercialize a previous one, with the aim of recovering the previous investments in research or of guaranteeing a business for the future, longer than the one obtainable by entering the market with the state of the art. state of the art research (state of the art technology means the most recent technology available on the market and the best in terms of quality). The receptiveness of a market to innovations can lead to delaying the timing of the launch of a product and a technology, even if it has already been tested in laboratories.
