Technology as a gerund

I was thinking about the use of the term  technology  in its many capacities -- as a noun, as a verb, as an adjective.  If technology is the "most important conversation of our time" according to Dr. Hlynka, I suggest we learn to view the term in its different dimensions.  While reading an article for another course (or maybe in a Wikipedia item) I came across the term 'learning as a gerund'.  That was an aha moment  -- take a noun and transform it into a non-finite verb form by adding 'ing' to the end of the word.  Voila!   A gerund.  Another way of looking at it is to think of a gerund being a word that can stand for a noun or verb.  So I'll take it one step further and say that we can look at the term technology as a noun, a verb, or an adjective. And then, if it is extended to its limits, it can be an adverb as well.  But "technologizing" is a strange word, I don't want to actually use it in a conversation or an article, and the spell checker doesn't like it...

This is not intended to be a silly discourse on the use of a particular word in multiple ways.  We continued to talk last week about information technology, where the information IS the technology, and started thinking about communications technology in the same way.  The 1987 quote by Henchley picked up on the idea of the transformative power of modern technology.  Fourteen years later this change is still moving forward to some point that keeps disappearing on the far horizon. The ideas of information and communication are now combined in the acronym ICT (Information Communication Technology) and John Finch asked us to be critical, responsible, ethical and creative in what we choose and use.  It's a tall order when everything is changing so quickly.

And I would also argue that it isn't just MODERN technology that has changed how and what we do -- the printing press is a form of technology that drove much of the Reformation in Europe more than 400 years ago.  Giving people inexpensive writing devices did it as well.  Paper is lightweight and transportable.  Books changed how humans thought, learned, and developed.  Having access to books, or denying access to books, is hugely political and it gave power to people who had no real power, couldn't vote unless they were wealthy, and didn't have access to the learning or knowledge tools of the day.  Watching the Berlin Wall come down is a moment that is seared in my brain.  Part of the force behind that event is the knowledge that was enabled by communication technology.  The military government of Egypt shut down the Twitter site in the face of the current public protests this week.

All technology comes with a cost, a force that drives it forward, and a power that allows us to change how we think and learn.  So although the term can be used in so many different ways, there is also the potential in information communication technology that has the ability to drive more political change.