The structure of technological action
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Abstract
The present study focuses on a problem which is crucial to an understanding of the foundations of technology: What is the nature of the relationship of knowledge to technological action? To analyze this relationship adequately it is necessary to examine (1) the forms of knowledge which are instrumental to technological action; (2) the forms of action
which benefit from such knowledge; and (3) the nature of the interaction. Successful resolution of this problem provides insight into the way knowledge rationalizes technology, that
is, how scientific knowledge makes technological action more efficient, on the one hand, and how such knowledge makes technological action the subject of conscious, critical control and understanding, on the other. It explains, for
example, why a "marriage" of science with technology provides the most effective way to meet the demands for the solution of practical technological problems. The study proposes a
theoretical schema which characterizes and classifies the diversity of actions embodied in technological responses. The theory clarifies the role of the agent seeking to exert technological
control, showing, for example, how the time at which
the agent intervenes and the type of intervention qualifies the resulting effect. In short, the present study claims to specify the basis and range of technological action, in its relation to the knowledge and rational control of conscious agents.
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