What is technology.

Our leaders would have us believe that we are so technologically advanced these days and that technology is the future. I have just sat back and pondered this having just replied to Jon's posting on pranksters starting a WWII tank. Most peoples ideas of technology is what they are exposed to, lets say 80% of the population, so to my mother, brother, sisters, aunt, half my friends etc. what is technology. Mobile phones, seriously. What is so technological about a phone, what do they do on it call, text, facebook, fantastic. I can see the future of humanity right there. Robots, yep really techy what do they do, replace what a man (the species) used to do. Is it more advanced, not if it simply replaces, just labour saving. IT and computer programming, in terms of administration it again is simply labour saving. Design now there is an area where technology works, being able to compute the stresses of a bridge in a typhoon before you build it - mind blowing. Its only one small portion of tech, what most consider as tech is household appliances.

AI is another topic (still related) which i think is abused. we have an advert for Microsoft on TV a guy is producing a 3D render of historic buildings for perpetuity, is this really AI. Did his camera take its self off for the day select the building it wished to scan and from which orientation, did its digital consciousness look deeper into all the nooks and crannies. No the bloke with the camera did, all the data was meshed together to build an image is that AI. Did the computer decide where to fill in the missing data or was it computational based of programming routines. Non of which are AI, to be truly artificial intelligence it has to have its own consciousness and decision making ability. This has been the debate from the 1950's, so why now do we accept computer programs as being AI.

And i never mentioned the skills shortage once.

There is a saying real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time. One is real and quantifiable and the other is artificial in nature.

so when we try to create employment for the new generation how do you tell them how to invent/make things - is there an app for that. Perhaps we will have veteran's of industry in 50 years time who have made a career swiping left.