Technology and Dialectics

Technology and Dialectics Nasir Tyabji The industrial revolution was defined by the phenomenon of the application of systematically acquired knowledge (of thermodynamics) to the improvement of production methods (the steam engine). The implications of this lay, decisively, in opening the area of knowledge of production methods, in general, to human enquiry. This was given the (refurbished) name of technology, and accorded a central role in the dialectics of capitalism. Later, the 1931 International Conference on the History of Science and Technology formulated key ideas in the dialectics of technology. This groundwork laid the basis for substantial advances in the history of technology in the subsequent years.