Technology, time and wealth: what relationships exist among these concepts?
The practical application of knowledge – a definition of technology – presupposes acquisition of knowledge. This requires time and wealth.
The acquisition of new knowledge – education – requires discretionary time. The person caught up in trying to meet his most basic needs has less time to learn new technologies that to do not immediately compensate his time investment.
Applying technology thus requires knowledge and discretionary time. Knowledge and time are really alternate forms of wealth. Furthermore, membership in a society that provides access to technology is itself a form of wealth, regardless of one’s individual fortune. Public libraries which provide access to technology exemplify this form of wealth.
In summary, time, knowledge, and wealth form a necessary foundation for technology.
Other relationships exist among technology, wealth and time. For example, to apply technology is to allocation resources, and wealth and time are fundamental resources. Thus, technology not only depends on time and wealth, it redistributes them.
The resource allocation decisions one makes may follow existing decision-making guidelines but raise new challenges. For example, can one allocate one’s times largely to electronic communication and not lose essential social skills? How much investment in infrastructure suffices for a family or a city? Are forms of wealth unrelated to technology undervalued in a technologically advanced society?
