optional Theme - technology
Technology
What is technology?Â
The device you are reading this on is approximately three years old. The technology of reading - the alphabet and the page - is approximately three thousand years old. The technology of the tool, the shaped stone that extends what a hand can do, is approximately three million years old. What is changing now is the speed, and the difficulty of seeing what current technology is doing to us while we are inside it. That last sentence was written by AI. What do I lose by not writing those words myself?
​The Technology optional theme starts from Marshall McLuhan's argument that the medium is the message: what matters is not only what a technology carries but what it does to the people who use it - how it changes what they can perceive, remember, and think. The four pages of this theme apply that argument across the TOK framework, from the question of what technology is and how old it is, through to who it serves and who answers for what it does.
What defines technology? Beyond modern gadgets, McLuhan argues that technological mediums fundamentally reshape how we perceive the world. These innovations are rarely lone breakthroughs; as Steven Johnson notes, they evolve from existing tools through the ‘adjacent possible.’ Defining technology's boundaries is our first step in uncovering the questions it forces us to ask.
Technology is rarely neutral. From crash-test dummies to data algorithms, default settings often mirror the experiences of designers while marginalizing others. This raises crucial questions about whose perspectives shape our tools and who is systematically excluded or disadvantaged by their very design.
Can machines truly know? While Turing tested for intelligence, Searle’s Chinese Room suggests that symbol manipulation is not genuine understanding. Modern AI can solve complex problems without explaining its logic, highlighting the gap between processing data and possesssing knowledge.
Technology is never neutral. From the Luddites to modern algorithms, tools often shift economic costs onto the vulnerable while automating bias and inequality. As autonomous systems take control, we must ask where accountability lies and how these tools reshape our human identity.