No. I’m looking for the justification behind this proufound statement:
Sarahfeena’s point seemed pretty clear. While human civilzation requires technology tosurvive, no specific technology is, in and of itself, required.
In the example you gave, the man in the wreck might have been saved just as easily using a GPS and an automated transponded built into his vehicle. (This would actually have been a better option, because it would alert and guide rescuers even when the occupants of a vehicle were rendered unconscious.)
Beyond that, when we discuss what society needs, the fact that individuals within society may or may not have depended on a particular bit of technology is merely coincidence. A society that has chosen to walk on hard or rough surfaces or in cold climates requires footwear. Such footwear requires some method to keep it on the feet. However, shoelaces are not required by society even if some individual somewhere was able to employ them to save his life.
Technology is, in its essence, information, and the ability to pass on that information.
It doesn’t matter if it is a flint arrow head, or a spy satelite, what matters is that you can some how store and transmit the information required to make that device to others.
Look ar it this way, If “Thogra”, the inventor of the arrowhead, had not been able to communicate the ideas/information on how to makea flint arrowhead onto others, we would be stuck at the level of continually reinventing the arrowhead… If we were lucky…
The latest gizmo is NOT technology… it is the uptake of information in two parts 1) RARE _ How to make the item, and 2)COMMON How to use the item
a possible 3rd application is : How to market the item, if it is not actually a “need”
Regards’
FML
But as society evolves, it builds into itself critical dependencies on all sorts of technologies. LA critically depends on the technologies required for getting water. Phoenix, as it is today, requires electrical power for air conditioning. 100 years ago it got along fine without it, but it was a much smaller city, cooler also since so much of it wasn’t paved over. The tech pushers gave us all our first fix, and now we’re hooked.
If you want to get nit-picky there are no doubt alternate technologies, so no very specific technology is required. But considered broadly they are.