Communicating technology: An historical view

Technology development and transfer are long-time human activities. They precede history and extend to the edges of archeology. This article takes an historical (and, for a few paragraphs, imaginative) view of the application and diffusion of technology as a communication process. It begins with the use, perpetuation, and spread of simple inventions by some animals. The narrative carries through paleolithic and neolithic times showing that, rather than being a relatively modern phenomenon, technology transfer was the means by which our progenitors advanced from dependers upon nature to manipulators of nature, from nomads to cultivators and breeders, and from subsistence farmers to urbanites. In developing the key communications technologies of speech, writing, and translation, humankind accelerated the transfer of the many other technological underpinnings of civilization. The article pays special attention to navigation and the linking role the Arbs played in its development. It also describes the British-American exchange of textile technology first westward across the Atlantic and then eastward. While time, timing, technology, and cast of characters continually change, the basics of communication and technology transfer remain the same.