Publisher's Synopsis
There are many possible definitions of "technology" and I will discuss some of these in this book. However, in this introduction let me use a definition of Svante Lindqvist2 who defines technology very intuitively as "those activities, directed towards the satisfaction of human wants, which produce change in the material world." He says also "the distinction between human "wants" and more limited human "needs" is crucial, for we do not use technology only to satisfy our essential material requirements." Consequently, from this perspective, a technology that is "broken" could be defined as those activities, directed towards the satisfaction of human wants that are intended to produce changes in the material world that either do not manage to satisfy these wants or do not produce changes in the material world, or both. Any definition of technology implies the use of terms as "activity" and expressions as "directed towards" that are very difficult to define without coming into deep philosophical considerations. We are going to see that to avoid a philosophical discussion it will become more and more impossible as we go through the different aspects of broken technologies.
