Technology (from Greek tekhnologia, "systematic treatment of art", also just "tech") encompasses tools and knowledge of making such tools invented and achieved mainly with the help of [science](science.md) and by long systematic effort. This includes everything from [stone tools](rock.md) to space rockets and [artificial intelligence](ai.md). On the Internet, as well as on this Wiki, this term is often used with the focus on [computer](computer.md) technology, i.e. [hardware](hardware.md) and [software](software.md), as this is the kind of technology that is being discussed and developed the most in our days. Technology, like fire, should serve us, but can also be dangerous and often gets misused and abused.
**The foremost purpose of technology is to make people not have to [work](work.md)**. Proponents of dystopian societies, such as [capitalists](capitalism.md), are afraid of technology "taking people's work" -- such people are for sure greatly idiotic and often end up abusing technology in the completely opposite manner: for enslaving and oppressing people. Proponents of [good technology](lrs.md) correctly try to make technology do work for humans so that people can actually live happy lives and do what they want. With this in mind we have to remember that **one of the most important concepts in technology is [minimalism](minimalism.md)**, as that is a necessary prerequisite for technological [freedom](freedom.md).
**Knowledge of older technology gets lost extremely quickly in society** -- this is a very crucial realization that follow a naive idea of a young man who usually believes that we somehow pertain knowledge of all technology that's been invented from dawn of man until today. In history our society has always only held knowledge of technology it was CURRENTLY ACTIVELY USING; knowledge of decades outdated technology only stays in hands of extremely few individuals and perhaps in some obscure books which ARE UNREADABLE to most, sometimes to none; yet older technology often gets forgotten completely. For example renaissance had to largely reinvent many arts and sciences of making building and statues of antiquity because middle ages have simply forgotten them. A more recent example can be found at [NASA](nasa.md) and their efforts to recreate THEIR OWN old rocket engines: you would think that since they literally have detailed documentation of those engines, they'd be able to simple make them again, but that's not the case because the small undocumented (yet crucial) [know-how](know_how.md) of the people who built the engines decades ago was lost with those individuals who died or retired in the meanwhile; NASA had to start a ginormous project to reinvent its own relatively recent technology. The same is happening in the field of [programming](programming.md): [modern](modern.md) [soydevs](soydev.md) just CANNOT create as efficient software as hackers back then as due to normalization of wasting computing resources they threw away the knowledge of [optimization](optimization.md) technique and [wisdom](unix_philosophy.md) in favor of bullshit such as "soft skills" and memorizing one billion genders and personal pronouns. One might naively think that e.g. since our agriculture is highly efficient and advanced due to all the immense complexity of our current machines, simple farming without machines would be a child's play for us, however the opposite is true: we no longer know how to farm without machines. If a [collapse](collpase.md) comes, we are simply fucked.
