Ursula K. Le Guin, A Rant on Technology

Technology is the active human interface with the material world.

- “Its technology is how a society copes with physical reality: how people get and keep and cook food, how they clothe themselves, what their power sources are (animal? human? water? wind? electricity? other?) what they build with and what they build, their medicine - and so on and on. Perhaps very ethereal people aren't interested in these mundane, bodily matters, but I'm fascinated by them, and I think most of my readers are too.”

Technology is necessary for societies to cope with physical reality. It is an escape, it is medicine, it is therapy, etc. Le Guin feels strongly that technology is essential to everyday life.

Technology is commonly misused and misinterpreted in meaning hi-tec, specialized, or digital. Other forms of technologies aren’t above another just due it’s physiological complexity.

A computer and a fire are both adequate or equal forms of technology. One way of coming about both of these products isn’t more advanced than another. Ursula Le Guin highlights this misconception by giving the example:

Anybody who ever lighted a fire without matches has probably gained some proper respect for "low" or "primitive" or "simple" technologies; anybody who ever lighted a fire with matches should have the wits to respect that notable hi-tech invention.

- “I don't know how to build and power a refrigerator, or program a computer, but I don't know how to make a fishhook or a pair of shoes, either. I could learn. We all can learn. That's the neat thing about technologies. They're what we can learn to do.”

One of my favorite parts of this essay is the bit where Le Guin states “we all can learn. That’s the neat thing about technology.” … We can always learn these skills.