ABSTRACT
Teaching technological literacy for over a decade has revealed discernible patterns of thought from students about technology. This chapter addresses the misunderstandings about technology, points to more productive definitions, and uses these definitions to suggest more profitable ways of understanding digital technologies for the present and future cultures. Conservatives see an opportunity in digital technology to expand control and order, while liberals fret about the intrusion on individual privacy and freedom. The movement from large, mainframe computers to personal computers has put the power of digital technology into the hands of millions more potential experimenters, which is radically altering how ordinary people live, work, and recreate. Marshall McLuhan is in league with what Laurens Van der Post revealed about language as a technology: The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.
