“...are not practical: they are done for their own sake.”
Very much disagree. I study art history, and the great majority of what we call artworks have instrumental value. They communicate with the divine, display power, and express ideas. They enable experiences and understanding that cannot be accessed through other means.
Think about architecture. Clearly a technology, right? Some of the most famous buildings (Hagia Sophia, the Guggenheim Bilbao) were built at the cutting edge of technology. But they also create the same kind of aesthetic experiences that food and music create. And not incidentally: that’s their point. So are they a technology or not?
Song works the same way. We know that ancient song served as a way of structuring lyrics so they could be memorized and repeated. It made possible certain kinds of communication that were not otherwise possible. Isn’t that a technology?
Hmm, the Hagia Sophia and the Guggenheim Bilbao aren't technology, no, I don't think — though obviously they incorporate and use many technologies. My point is certainly not to say that technology cannot lead to aesthetic experiences. On the contrary, it can and should! But it does that by way of a different class of ideas and objects that isn't usually called "technology". (I'd add that I think non-tech has higher status than tech, since it's more directly related to what humans truly want in their lives.)
Ultimately I guess it comes down to whether things like "communicating with the divine, displaying power, and expressing ideas" are distinct from practical / instrumental purposes. If you don't think they are, then sure, nearly every kind of idea is a technology. I do think that the distinction is useful, though.
Song as a technology for memorization is a view I can get behind! Though I doubt it's the main reason people sing and have sung, even in antiquity and prehistory; it's more of a byproduct.
I see what you mean about buildings, and I'm glad you can see mnemonotechnics as a technology. But I think you might still be thinking too narrowly about what a technology is supposed to accomplish.
Put it this way: video chat is clearly a technology for communication. Byzantine icons were often described as portals through which people could access the divine. The purpose (communication with someone not physically present) is the same, with the obvious difference is that in on case its a divine being. We may or may not believe in that divine being, but can't we recognize that the intended design of the object is highly similar?
Didn't people use to consider worldly/material and heavenly/spiritual concerns to be quite philosophically distinct, though? The distinction I'm gesturing at is analogous to that.
Philosophically distinct, but still connected. The two spheres were distinct, but there was a clear recognition that the human condition is a material condition, so they needed to use material things to access the spiritual.
I guess, for me, a working definition of "technology" might be "an object pr process that makes a task possible or more efficient." What that task is (remove dirt from a floor, memorize a text, send people into space, contact a god) is beside the point, though it's interesting and instructive to classify them. But I can see how that definition, which would start to include immaterial things like language and art and elections, might be too capacious to be useful for your project.
I think this definition is interesting because, to my earlier point above, it kind of allows for things that were once the most technologically advanced eg efficient way to do something can become primarily art when they are superseded by other technological advances. Something that was once a modern technology Can have a second life as an art
Oct 9, 2023·edited Oct 9, 2023Liked by Étienne Fortier-Dubois
“Put it this way: video chat is clearly a technology for communication. Byzantine icons were often described as portals through which people could access the divine. The purpose (communication with someone not physically present) is the same, with the obvious difference is that in on case its a divine being. We may or may not believe in that divine being, but can't we recognize that the intended design of the object is highly similar?”
This is interesting to me because it also possibly suggestd things that were once MORE of a technology can BECOME primarily art. There are so many things we used to rely on as technologies but now appreciate for aesthetic value. Or appreciate for a process of use that is not the most “technologically advanced” and becomes part of an aesthetic enjoyment… if that makes sense
Yes, absolutely agree! What an interesting point. Some of the most evolutionarily significant technologies, like pottery, weaving, and handwriting, are now considered pleasant but mostly inconsequential crafts. Rhymed, rhythmically consistent verse is considered old fashioned now, but it used to be one of the most important technologies for memorizing and retrieving information. How interesting to think about what current technologies will have the same result.
If a building isn’t technology then a car isn’t either according to the same logic. A car is not useful at all its a piece of art for its own sake. Same reasoning, you have to do better....
I came here to say basically the same thing -- recipes are much more of a practical way to use available ingredients to maximize social bonding and nutrition gain (depending on what one is optimizing for). Songs aren't created in some ivory tower isolation room, they serve important social purposes and arguably social innovations have been just as important to humans as, for example, the ability to manipulate fire and iron.
The ultimate issue with tech trees, why none has been completed before, is hinted at here but not really described fully. When it comes down to it, the oldest and most potent technologies we have are social technologies. Jimmy Page could never have learned guitar, let alone written songs without a society to support him.
This concession opens a rabbit hole of massive proportions to tumble down. All of human culture and society - marriage, friendship, trade, war, et cetera are ultimately technologies, even by your definition here. Marriage helps keep young men tamed and prevents revolts. Friendships allow for the overcoming of zero-sum competition and promotes greater flourishing in the long run. Hopefully I don't have to explain trade or war.
Either way, all of these things are instrumentally valuable. If you truly do want to create a 'tech tree' that deserves the name, you'll have to include social technologies as well, as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, which is why it's worth thinking about the scope, as the above essay tries to! I like the idea of social technology but it's rather difficult to define, or to figure out how exactly it has led to other advances. In the full history of the world, they're crucial; in a tech tree, they can be left as invisible background.
So I think the definition of technology is a rabbit hole on the tech tree goal. Each node on your tree needs to help you show relationships like prerequisites, inspirations, improvements - so you aren't looking for a node to strictly adhere to a particular definition of technology, you are defining the nodes in your tree as those that can show the relationships and then because you happen to have labelled it a tech tree by analogy, you are perhaps getting stuck on the "tech" part of that label?
Rather than form a list of technologies/nodes upfront to connect, could you start with super high level fuzzy categories of knowledge like science, philosophy, art - or familiar timeline milestones like prehistoric, bronze, iron, etc. - then you can selectively add detail to the connections as further nodes and connections?
I think you will definitely crossover concepts of art and philosophy this way, but that's ok if the relationships are important right (eg. inspiration)?
I would argue the "add detail" heuristic could be; is there an interesting relationship hidden here?
In terms of a completion heuristic, I suspect this could be a wikipedia scale endeavour if you let it, and would say the finish line is when you get bored with it and/or open it to collaborative contribution.
Yes, I argued for this in the original tech tree. I don't think the tree has to be limited to tech, except as a way of reducing scope and making it more likely to be eventually completed. I also suspect that links between non-tech and tech elements will be more difficult to find than those that exist within each domain.
Are advances in mathematics an advance in technology? These seem to be a gray area between instrumental and terminal as they often have interesting applications but are also pursued for their own sake
Indeed, good question! In my project I decided to include them only if there are clear ways they lead to unambiguous technologies or other important mathematical/scientific discoveries. Otherwise there's just too much math. Of course, that could mean that parts of math that seem pointless today might become important entries in a future version of the tree, just like previously "useless" math like number theory (leading to cryptography) and neural networks (leading to AI) did.
It's a wild intuition that there are more terminally valued things than instrumentally valued things. That's wild! Imagine "glory in competition" is a terminal value and the competition is war. Then horsemanship, bridle-making, smithying, and horse-training will be instrumentally valuable to that end - as will, supply chain logistics and generalship and hand to hand fighting tactics and army healthcare. A single terminal value seems to spawn many more instrumental skills and needs for its fulfillment and the more complex the society the more types of instrumental good can go towards the fulfillment of a single terminal goal.
It's true that a single instrumental skills like smithying can serve many different terminal values, like art, music, war glory. But the sheer quantity of ways to make art, music, and war glory should dominate in quantity, no?
Sorry to sieze on this minor point. The range of technology seems to me to be very vast. I'd count various religions as several technologies combined with several terminal values, while even something like writing can be instrumental record keeping or Calligraphic art (but there I'd call art the terminal value and black stroke brush, ink, and rice paper the technologies enabling it).
Ah but I did say "terminally-valued things," not "terminal values"! I agree that there are not that many terminal values, but they get expressed in countless ways. Each piece of art, each conversation with friends, each dish is a terminally-valued thing. I'm not actually sure that as physical objects, these things beat the instrumentally-valued things in quantity, but abstractly I think they do. A single technological idea can spawn a thousand works of art, while the reverse is not true. This is probably mostly because a technological idea, once it works, is typically just adopted as is, rather than tweaked into a myriad variations to the same extent that art is.
Anyway, that's sort of the reasoning that led to write that sentence. I'm not sure it's that meaningful, to be honest!
Oh no! Then the number of terminally valued things shoots to infinity as each time I sing the song or view the art is its own unique terminally valued action!
I kind of think it IS that way, though. Or, I think there’s a case to be made for this happening at least sometimes. Some concerts by an artist on the same tour are wildly different from each other, for example. And I do think certain songs hit different with different weather, emotional states, etc. I would kind of be in favor of viewing a cluster of, say, a certain piece of art, a certain emotional state, a certain setting, a certain historical context as, together, a distinct entity than it might be if even one of those things were changed. I know this is not how we usually think about things but I kind of like it
“...are not practical: they are done for their own sake.”
Very much disagree. I study art history, and the great majority of what we call artworks have instrumental value. They communicate with the divine, display power, and express ideas. They enable experiences and understanding that cannot be accessed through other means.
Think about architecture. Clearly a technology, right? Some of the most famous buildings (Hagia Sophia, the Guggenheim Bilbao) were built at the cutting edge of technology. But they also create the same kind of aesthetic experiences that food and music create. And not incidentally: that’s their point. So are they a technology or not?
Song works the same way. We know that ancient song served as a way of structuring lyrics so they could be memorized and repeated. It made possible certain kinds of communication that were not otherwise possible. Isn’t that a technology?
Hmm, the Hagia Sophia and the Guggenheim Bilbao aren't technology, no, I don't think — though obviously they incorporate and use many technologies. My point is certainly not to say that technology cannot lead to aesthetic experiences. On the contrary, it can and should! But it does that by way of a different class of ideas and objects that isn't usually called "technology". (I'd add that I think non-tech has higher status than tech, since it's more directly related to what humans truly want in their lives.)
Ultimately I guess it comes down to whether things like "communicating with the divine, displaying power, and expressing ideas" are distinct from practical / instrumental purposes. If you don't think they are, then sure, nearly every kind of idea is a technology. I do think that the distinction is useful, though.
Song as a technology for memorization is a view I can get behind! Though I doubt it's the main reason people sing and have sung, even in antiquity and prehistory; it's more of a byproduct.
I see what you mean about buildings, and I'm glad you can see mnemonotechnics as a technology. But I think you might still be thinking too narrowly about what a technology is supposed to accomplish.
Put it this way: video chat is clearly a technology for communication. Byzantine icons were often described as portals through which people could access the divine. The purpose (communication with someone not physically present) is the same, with the obvious difference is that in on case its a divine being. We may or may not believe in that divine being, but can't we recognize that the intended design of the object is highly similar?
Didn't people use to consider worldly/material and heavenly/spiritual concerns to be quite philosophically distinct, though? The distinction I'm gesturing at is analogous to that.
Philosophically distinct, but still connected. The two spheres were distinct, but there was a clear recognition that the human condition is a material condition, so they needed to use material things to access the spiritual.
I guess, for me, a working definition of "technology" might be "an object pr process that makes a task possible or more efficient." What that task is (remove dirt from a floor, memorize a text, send people into space, contact a god) is beside the point, though it's interesting and instructive to classify them. But I can see how that definition, which would start to include immaterial things like language and art and elections, might be too capacious to be useful for your project.
I think this definition is interesting because, to my earlier point above, it kind of allows for things that were once the most technologically advanced eg efficient way to do something can become primarily art when they are superseded by other technological advances. Something that was once a modern technology Can have a second life as an art
“Put it this way: video chat is clearly a technology for communication. Byzantine icons were often described as portals through which people could access the divine. The purpose (communication with someone not physically present) is the same, with the obvious difference is that in on case its a divine being. We may or may not believe in that divine being, but can't we recognize that the intended design of the object is highly similar?”
This is interesting to me because it also possibly suggestd things that were once MORE of a technology can BECOME primarily art. There are so many things we used to rely on as technologies but now appreciate for aesthetic value. Or appreciate for a process of use that is not the most “technologically advanced” and becomes part of an aesthetic enjoyment… if that makes sense
Yes, absolutely agree! What an interesting point. Some of the most evolutionarily significant technologies, like pottery, weaving, and handwriting, are now considered pleasant but mostly inconsequential crafts. Rhymed, rhythmically consistent verse is considered old fashioned now, but it used to be one of the most important technologies for memorizing and retrieving information. How interesting to think about what current technologies will have the same result.
If a building isn’t technology then a car isn’t either according to the same logic. A car is not useful at all its a piece of art for its own sake. Same reasoning, you have to do better....
I came here to say basically the same thing -- recipes are much more of a practical way to use available ingredients to maximize social bonding and nutrition gain (depending on what one is optimizing for). Songs aren't created in some ivory tower isolation room, they serve important social purposes and arguably social innovations have been just as important to humans as, for example, the ability to manipulate fire and iron.
The ultimate issue with tech trees, why none has been completed before, is hinted at here but not really described fully. When it comes down to it, the oldest and most potent technologies we have are social technologies. Jimmy Page could never have learned guitar, let alone written songs without a society to support him.
This concession opens a rabbit hole of massive proportions to tumble down. All of human culture and society - marriage, friendship, trade, war, et cetera are ultimately technologies, even by your definition here. Marriage helps keep young men tamed and prevents revolts. Friendships allow for the overcoming of zero-sum competition and promotes greater flourishing in the long run. Hopefully I don't have to explain trade or war.
Either way, all of these things are instrumentally valuable. If you truly do want to create a 'tech tree' that deserves the name, you'll have to include social technologies as well, as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, which is why it's worth thinking about the scope, as the above essay tries to! I like the idea of social technology but it's rather difficult to define, or to figure out how exactly it has led to other advances. In the full history of the world, they're crucial; in a tech tree, they can be left as invisible background.
So I think the definition of technology is a rabbit hole on the tech tree goal. Each node on your tree needs to help you show relationships like prerequisites, inspirations, improvements - so you aren't looking for a node to strictly adhere to a particular definition of technology, you are defining the nodes in your tree as those that can show the relationships and then because you happen to have labelled it a tech tree by analogy, you are perhaps getting stuck on the "tech" part of that label?
Rather than form a list of technologies/nodes upfront to connect, could you start with super high level fuzzy categories of knowledge like science, philosophy, art - or familiar timeline milestones like prehistoric, bronze, iron, etc. - then you can selectively add detail to the connections as further nodes and connections?
I think you will definitely crossover concepts of art and philosophy this way, but that's ok if the relationships are important right (eg. inspiration)?
I would argue the "add detail" heuristic could be; is there an interesting relationship hidden here?
In terms of a completion heuristic, I suspect this could be a wikipedia scale endeavour if you let it, and would say the finish line is when you get bored with it and/or open it to collaborative contribution.
Yes, I argued for this in the original tech tree. I don't think the tree has to be limited to tech, except as a way of reducing scope and making it more likely to be eventually completed. I also suspect that links between non-tech and tech elements will be more difficult to find than those that exist within each domain.
Are advances in mathematics an advance in technology? These seem to be a gray area between instrumental and terminal as they often have interesting applications but are also pursued for their own sake
Indeed, good question! In my project I decided to include them only if there are clear ways they lead to unambiguous technologies or other important mathematical/scientific discoveries. Otherwise there's just too much math. Of course, that could mean that parts of math that seem pointless today might become important entries in a future version of the tree, just like previously "useless" math like number theory (leading to cryptography) and neural networks (leading to AI) did.
Totally agree. Just think it’s fascinating to think about math as simultaneously a science and an art or philosophy
It's a wild intuition that there are more terminally valued things than instrumentally valued things. That's wild! Imagine "glory in competition" is a terminal value and the competition is war. Then horsemanship, bridle-making, smithying, and horse-training will be instrumentally valuable to that end - as will, supply chain logistics and generalship and hand to hand fighting tactics and army healthcare. A single terminal value seems to spawn many more instrumental skills and needs for its fulfillment and the more complex the society the more types of instrumental good can go towards the fulfillment of a single terminal goal.
It's true that a single instrumental skills like smithying can serve many different terminal values, like art, music, war glory. But the sheer quantity of ways to make art, music, and war glory should dominate in quantity, no?
Sorry to sieze on this minor point. The range of technology seems to me to be very vast. I'd count various religions as several technologies combined with several terminal values, while even something like writing can be instrumental record keeping or Calligraphic art (but there I'd call art the terminal value and black stroke brush, ink, and rice paper the technologies enabling it).
Ah but I did say "terminally-valued things," not "terminal values"! I agree that there are not that many terminal values, but they get expressed in countless ways. Each piece of art, each conversation with friends, each dish is a terminally-valued thing. I'm not actually sure that as physical objects, these things beat the instrumentally-valued things in quantity, but abstractly I think they do. A single technological idea can spawn a thousand works of art, while the reverse is not true. This is probably mostly because a technological idea, once it works, is typically just adopted as is, rather than tweaked into a myriad variations to the same extent that art is.
Anyway, that's sort of the reasoning that led to write that sentence. I'm not sure it's that meaningful, to be honest!
Oh no! Then the number of terminally valued things shoots to infinity as each time I sing the song or view the art is its own unique terminally valued action!
I think at this point we're inching close to the philosophical question of "what is a thing?" which is probably best not to get into 🤔
I kind of think it IS that way, though. Or, I think there’s a case to be made for this happening at least sometimes. Some concerts by an artist on the same tour are wildly different from each other, for example. And I do think certain songs hit different with different weather, emotional states, etc. I would kind of be in favor of viewing a cluster of, say, a certain piece of art, a certain emotional state, a certain setting, a certain historical context as, together, a distinct entity than it might be if even one of those things were changed. I know this is not how we usually think about things but I kind of like it