Came across this sentence in Nicholas Carr's
The Shallows: "Language itself is not a technology." his argument is that because it is "native to our species" that it is not an artifact and anything that is not an artifact cannot be a technology. Is this correct?
I disagree with the notion that language is not technology because 1. It is not an artifact and 2 language is native to our species.
ReplyDeleteConsider that clothing is clearly as native to our species as the use of language. Both are useful tools for achieving a variety of ends that benefit us. Both have broad variation to address cultural subtleties. Both are products of human invention and organization. Both stretch back to very early in our history.
I see no reason to distinguish between language and clothing merely because one involves a tangible physical product and the other does not. On the other hand, at different periods in history, clothing was so highly stylized to convey information about class, status, gender, age, profession, etc, that it could easily itself be regarded as a form of language.