I've been thinking of a better way to explain this. We know what a technology is, so I won't give a laboriously complete definition beyond saying that a technology is some kind of tool that allows us to apply some kind of knowledge to some kind of problem to achieve some kind of end, and that technologies are often used in combination. So here's an example...
A farmer has 1-hectare of land that she plants with wheat, and which, when harvested, she turns into flour to make bread to feeds herself. The wheat is growing in the field.
At a particular point in the year the farmer has to remove the wheat from the field if she wants to turn it into bread. She could rip the stems straight from the ground by hand of course, but instead she uses a technology, a scythe, to cut the wheat more efficiently. She could carry the wheat away from the field on her back, but it's more efficient and effective to use a technology, a cart, to transport it instead. If she wants to eat bread for more than just that short window in the year when the wheat is mature, but before it begins to rot in the field, she can use a technology, a barn, to store it in.
Whenever she wants to make bread she could collect the amount of wheat she needs from the barn, separate the grains from the chaff, and then grind it into flour, but instead she uses more technology, a thresher and a mill to separate the grains from the stalks and turn the wheat into bags of flour she can store more efficiently. Additionally she can use a baler to compress the left-over straw and store that as bedding for the horse that pulls the plough and the cart. That horse is a technology as well of course.
When taken as a whole the farm itself is also a technology - a technology that takes an initial idea (it's best not to starve) and a material fact (the farmer has a hectare of land) and systematically applies knowledge and energy to turn wheat into bread. All the incremental steps from wheat-to-bread are dependent on knowledge, energy, as well as feedback.
At the beginning of the year the farmer uses her knowledge along with feedback from the environment to decide when it's the best time to plough the field and plant the coming year's crop. Environmental feedbacks like the weather (hot, cold, wet, dry) and the level of predation or infection decide how well the wheat grows, and the farmer may have to take steps to ensure the crop's good health. Feedback from the horse determines if it can pull the plough and the cart for another year. Feedback from the cart determines if it's up to the job or needs essential maintenance first; feedback from the barn lets the farmer know if the roof needs fixing or if the door needs replacing; feedback from the threshing, milling, and baling machines let the farmer know if she needs to fix or replace parts or apply more grease. All these tasks require the application of knowledge we call skills and the application of energy we call labour.
Each necessary step from wheat-to-bread relies on the efficiency of, and feedback from, all the other necessary steps. If the milling machine breaks down or the horse goes lame she's scuppered. The farmer has to manage her time, energy and her available material resources to ensure that all the inputs of wheat farming produce the desired outputs of bread making.
The technology that is the farm is therefore a complex of dependent and competing factors which have to be systematically organised into some set of optimised procedures that, given a set of initial conditions, and taking into account any relevant feedback from ongoing conditions, can be efficiently implemented in sequence to achieve the specific set of end conditions. So the technology that is the farm doesn't just consist of using other technologies like the horse and threshing machine, it exists as an over-arching technological system that has to be run through in the right order if its to be effective at turning wheat into bread. As a technology the farm is algorithmic - or, if you prefer, you can think of the farm as a very slow, rather dumb AI!
How does the farmer acquire the knowledge she needs to assess and respond to feedback and apply the skills necessary to operate the farm successfully? If she was starting from scratch she would have to know something about important things like meteorology, ecology, natural resources, animal husbandry, hand tools and their uses, woodworking, machining, leatherwork, how ploughs, carts, threshers, mills, and balers work, how to make a successful loaf, and countless other things. Perhaps she learned that from her parents, or read about it in books, or went to farming college, or gained knowledge and experience working on someone else's farm, or some or all of the above. Of course, once acquired the farmer improves and refines her knowledge and skills, as well as her ability to effectively implement the farming algorithm, through the feedback of her own farming practice.
Knowledge and its application to ideas develop through things like observing and understanding the material world around us, as well as beliefs, customs, norms, and common practices, and sundry other products of human thought and labour and, importantly, interaction. When we consider these things with regards to particular subject or area of human endeavour we can call it a culture - in this case a farming culture. A farming culture is how things are done on farms, how farmers think about, related to, and undertake the necessary tasks of farming, how farmers approach the knowledge and skills they require, and how they interact with the environment, with the technology and resources they use, with each other, and with the community at large.
The farmer and her farm didn't suddenly spring into existence, nor do they exist in isolation from their immediate community or a wider social context. Many things have to be in place for the farmer to operate the farm effectively. Does she have to make her own boots, which would involve tanning hide and making glue, smelting ore for nails, gimlets and hammers, spinning flax into thread to stitch them together, making pitch to waterproof them? Is she going to weave her own fabric, and make her own scissors and needles so she can turn that fabric into clothes; dig clay and make bricks, or fell trees and saw planks so she can build barns, stables and houses; quarry stone to make a mill or split slate to make tiles; cast, smith and machine metal to make complex machines like balers and threshers; construct ovens, manufacture loaf tins, plates, knives, rugs, bed linen, water heaters etc etc? Well, not on her own, and not without spending an awful lot of time and energy getting everything in place simply to allow her to begin to do those things, which she needs to do if she's going to begin to farm even a single crop on a small plot of land - and certainly not before feeding herself first!
Putting that aside though, let's say that the hectare of land produces 5000kg of wheat per year, and that she needs 500kg of that to keep from starving (N.B. I'm being generous here: that's just under one-and-a-half kilos of bread a day - which is quite a lot of bread!). So what does she do with the 90% of her crop which is left-over? Burn it?
Well, if the farmer was an Anarchist she might just distribute it around her immediate community - after all there's enough left over to keep nine adults in bread for a year, or maybe 20 toddlers, which has got to be better than leaving it to the rats, right? If she was part of an Anarchist community her generosity after the harvest could simply be repaid in kind: someone comes over to help her fix the roof of the barn, someone makes her a harness for the horse and cart, someone else lends her their threshing machine or teaches her how to repair and maintain the baler. And of course, in turn she might help someone else fix their own roof with what she's learned, or teach them how to make bread, and get boots and cloth and cheese in return.
Yes, perhaps that's just how things are done in her village: how people think about, related to, and undertake the things they need to do to live, how they approach and share the resources, knowledge and skills they all depend on, and how they interact with their environments, with the technologies they use, and with each other. That's just their culture. So the farmer's farm doesn't just produce wheat flour loaves - the farmer and the farm becomes significant social assets: the farm is a cultural technology as well as a technology for producing food. After all, isn't that kind of what we mean when we talk about agriculture?
Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the farmer is an Anarchist, or if she barters or sells the surplus to her neighbours to cover vets bills, horse shoes and milling machines. It doesn't matter if she asks someone to assess the current and potential value held within the farm and all its assets, including her labour, and then enters into a legally binding contract with them that extends her a certain amount of credit against a portion of the income her crop will fetch at market over the coming 30 years. It doesn't matter if the surplus goes to her local community or is shipped half-way round the world and used as an ingredient in specialised pet supplement for lizard enthusiasts. Even in that case the farm-as-technology continues to be a social asset (though perhaps not so much of an asset to her own community - but to someone's community at least!) and a cultural technology (even if the culture that benefits is called Capitalism!).
A cultural technology then is some tool, system, or set of practices that allows a society to create, store, share, and interpret information that benefits and shapes its own identity, structures, ideas, practices, norms, assumptions, and beliefs. A cultural technology is both something a society produces as well as a force that allows it to transforms itself, and to possibly transform other societies also. AI is a cultural technology.
A farm is a pretty clear-cut thing. Its an element of cultural technology with the primary function of producing food. Producing food has unambiguous social utility - people always need food.
While it may be a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good loaf must be in want of cheese and pickle, what if you're employing technology to produce something that people don't really benefit from? I mean, can you think of anything that people use or consume which not only doesn't help or benefit them, but actually makes their lives measurably worse, or even harms them? How is that able to happen? What if that technology doesn't just work against people's best interests but also acts as a force which transforms those who use it, and through that transform the societies it operates in - and not in a good way?
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