Technology

Technology is any tool, innovation or advancement which contributes something of value in terms of life simplification (most commonly automation of manual tasks) or enhancing humans with new abilities which were previously not possible.

Arthur C. Clarke famously said:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The joke is that things which are "techie" in nature are "all things considered cool about technology, but in fact quite the opposite" (or another way of putting that is that techies deal in technologies which have either been abandoned by the not yet

Technical Debt

Technical Debt is defined differently depending on the organization/expert you ask, but the underlying commonality is that it represents "a difference between what (i.e. software/hardware) was promised (to users/customers) and what was actually delivered (i.e. incomplete software/hardware with bugs or errors)"

Another way of looking at Technical Debt is anything the hinders the quality, performance or security of your technology (i.e. software/hardware). Such limitations will also limit the speed at which development can happen (and equivalently the "burndown rate" for closing bugs and/or "sprint pace" for adding new features). Business-wise, it makes sense to then tackle and remove Technical Debt as early and often as possible, in order to ensure your teams are operating at full capacity and maximum efficiency. Technical Debt is often the result of shortcuts, workarounds or temporary fixes to meet deadlines, that often never end up getting fixed due to new deadlines coming up and taking priority.

From the Quality Assurance perspective, strict adherence to DevOps' continuous improvement principles would dictate that any single piece of supporting software/hardware that's allowed to become out-of-date is in fact a form of Technical Debt. This means that a software/hardware stack should always be capable of operating with the highest "stable" version number of any dependencies (i.e. libraries, APIs or supporting platforms) in order to have the highest possible quality of software/hardware. This is important because many libraries, APIs or platforms are constantly receiving updates which result in major improvements such as security patches for critical vulnerabilities, user experience simplifications, feature enhancements, and/or performance optimizations.

• wikipedia: Technical debt

• Agile Alliance -- Technical Debt Initiative: https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/initiatives/technical-debt
• Technical Debt as a lack of understanding: https://daverupert.com/2020/11/technical-debt-as-a-lack-of-understanding/ (includes foreword & video from Ward Cunningham who coined “TechDebt” metaphor)

Big Tech

A term that typically refers derogatorily or disparagingly to FAANGS along with the most dominant players with presences in Silicon Valley like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Salesforce, Twitter, Palantir, etc. Often also expands out to the "hipper" or more hyped mid-sized Tech Startups in North America (beyond Silicon Valley). It could include some of the moderate influencer companies like Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, etc. It can sometimes even more broadly include foreign technology companies like Samsung, LG, Lenovo, Huawei, Xiaomi, Baidu, Tencent (QQ), SoftBank, NTT, Panasonic, SONY, Fujitsu, Fujifilm (Fuji-Xerox), Hitachi, Toshiba, Konica-Minolta, Garmin, Philips, Siemens, Nokia, Canon; and to a far lesser extent some of the older, longer-term tech/electronics players such as 3M, Cisco, Intel, HP, Dell, Acer, etc.

FAANGS

Facebook Amazon Apple Netflix Google Spotify (FAANGS)

Tools

• TechDebt calculator: https://www.stepsize.com/tech-debt-calculator

Resources

• List of Technologies used by Top Million websites worldwide: http://trends.builtwith.com/
• Gartner Magic Quadrant index: https://www.gartner.com/en/research/magic-quadrant
• Gartner Hype Cycle: https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle
• Global tech spend in 2013 and beyond - Latin America booms, Asia blooms, Europe glooms: http://www.zdnet.com/global-tech-spend-in-2013-latin-america-booms-asia-blooms-europe-gloom-7000009386/

External Links

• wikipedia: List of emerging technologies
• wikipedia: Technology
• wikipedia: Technocracy
• wikipedia: Tech
• wikipedia: Technological and industrial history of 20th-century Canada
• wikipedia: Technological and industrial history of 21st-century Canada
• wikipedia: Technology life cycle
• wikipedia: Entropy (information theory)
• Olduvai stone (humanity's first-known "technology"): http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/ykHw5-oqQEGFnvat1gavxA
• Gartner Hype Cycle: https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle
• Why Minority Report was spot on (for technology): http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/16/minority-report-technology-comes-true
• Wave hello to Microsoft's Kinect: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/15/kinect-xbox-microsoft-e3?intcmp=240
• Map of the Decade, ExaTrends of the Decade, and the Zeitgeist for 2011: http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2010/12/map_of_the_deca.html
• The 2012 Digital 100 - Complete List of the world's most valuable PRIVATE Digital Tech Companies: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-2012-digital-100-the-complete-list-1-100-2012-9
• 10 Mobile Technology Trends Sure to Impact Your Work, Life in 2013: http://www.eweek.com/mobile/slideshows/10-mobile-technology-trends-sure-to-impact-your-work-life-in-2013/
• 2010's Tech media invest 100: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tech-media-invest-100/top-100-technology-innovators
• Top 10 Most Overhyped Tech Products: http://ca.tech.yahoo.com/reviews/digital_trends/article/1108
• One Technology That Will Rock 2010: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/kidehen@openlinksw.com/blog/?id=1601
• PARC Labs - 10 Key Accomplishments During First Decade After Spinning Out of Xerox: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/PARC-Labs-10-Key-Accomplishments-During-First-Decade-With-Xerox-531941/
• 5 big things to watch out for in 2012: http://gigaom.com/2011/12/19/five-big-things-to-watch-out-for-in-2012/
• 10 Technology Skills That Will No Longer Help You Get A Job: http://readwrite.com/2013/05/01/10-technology-skills-no-longer-in-demand
• Ten Tech Skills Heading the Way of the Dinosaur - 2013 Edition: http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/generic.asp?pageid=3487&country=United+States
• Predicting the next decade of tech - From the cloud to disappearing computers and the rise of robots: http://www.zdnet.com/predicting-the-next-decade-of-tech-from-the-cloud-to-disappearing-computers-and-the-rise-of-robots-7000035102/
• What happened to Japan's electronic giants?: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-21992700
• Technology Impact On Children: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/302272/technology-impact-on-children.html
• No one’s coming. It’s up to us: https://medium.com/@hondanhon/no-ones-coming-it-s-up-to-us-de8d9442d0d
• This chart shows every major technological innovation in the last 150 years — and how they have changed the way we work: http://www.businessinsider.com/barclays-how-technology-has-changed-the-world-2018-4
• 10 predictions about the media industry in the New Year (2019): https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/1763827/
• Top 50 Developer Tools of 2018: https://stackshare.io/posts/top-developer-tools-2018
• Is 'Big Tech' too big? A look at growing antitrust scrutiny: https://japantoday.com/category/tech/is-%27big-tech%27-too-big-a-look-at-growing-antitrust-scrutiny
• Amazon, Google Questioned By Congress About Manipulating Algorithms: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/338106/amazon-google-questioned-by-congress-about-manipu.html
• Maybe Breaking Up Big Tech Isn't Such A Bad Idea: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/341311/maybe-breaking-up-big-tech-isnt-such-a-bad-idea.html
• How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind — from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist: https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3
• State of the Digital Nation 2016: https://blog.marvelapp.com/state-of-the-digital-nation-2016/
• State of the Digital Nation 2020: https://medium.com/swlh/state-of-the-digital-nation-2020-venture-road-22de4377836
• Gartner cancels events, Dell World goes virtual due to coronavirus -- 2020 tech conference cancellations and travel bans: https://www.zdnet.com/article/sxsw-canceled-due-to-coronavirus-all-the-2020-tech-conference-cancellations-and-travel-bans/
• Capitalism’s Addiction Problem: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/capitalisms-addiction-problem/606769/
• 'Blacklist' and 'whitelist' terms banned by UK cyber security agency for being racist: https://www.techspot.com/news/85080-uk-cyber-security-agency-stop-using-racist-blacklist.html
• 7 Steps for a Successful Technology Rollout: https://www.fsrmagazine.com/expert-takes/7-steps-successful-technology-rollout
• Trust Belt - Why We're Losing Confidence In Technology: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/362025/trust-belt-why-were-losing-confidence-in-technol.html
• Technology examples - How Many Millions of Lines of Code Does It Take? (INFOGRAPHIC): https://www.visualcapitalist.com/millions-lines-of-code/
• 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2022: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/23/1045416/10-breakthrough-technologies-2022/
• Japan once led global tech innovation. How did it fall so behind?: https://restofworld.org/2022/japan-led-global-tech-innovation-fall-behind/

See Also

IT | Software | Hardware | Information Technology | Mobile Technology | PM | Business | Energy