This content is connected with The Open University Computing and IT certifications.

The role and impact of innovation in both our individual and working lives is ever growing. Understanding how people form technology and how innovation shapes individuals's interactions with each other and the natural world is very important - not only for those who research, establish and carry out brand-new innovations, but likewise for all those people and organisations that have to use those innovations in their working and personal lives.

Technology is not a neutral word. Different people will provide it different meaning depending on their viewpoint and context.

Members of the Faculty of Technology are no different, but for several years we have actually adopted one particular definition of innovation that reflects our own objectives and objectives:

There are three important aspects to this meaning:

1. Technology is about acting to meet a human need instead of merely comprehending the functions of the natural world, which is the goal of science. The creation of the microscope was driven by a need to check out the world of the small, beyond our unaided vision. This technological option to a long standing issue has in turn enabled us to understand more the functions of the world which in turn has actually led to the development of more technologies.

2. It uses a lot more than scientific knowledge and includes values as much as facts, useful craft knowledge as much as theoretical understanding. The iPod is an example of where the physics of making a small device bring a lot music is married with creative design to make an iconic should have accessory.

3. It involves organised methods of doing things. It covers the intended and unexpected interactions in between items (makers, devices, artifacts) and the people and systems who make them, use them or are impacted by them through different procedures. Lots of people like to consume coffee, frequently in a coffee shop. That coffee may have originated from trees which have actually been bred specifically for increased yields that support a small farmer and his household but that needs pesticides that were developed and produced in another country. The gathered coffee beans will themselves be carried worldwide, to be processed and positioned in bundles which are distributed to stores that then make the cup of coffee in a polystyrene cup that was manufactured for the purpose but which then needs to dealt with and so on. Every choice we make counts on, and feeds, a highly interdependent and far reaching lifestyle where some have much and some have little.

Technology is a hands-on, can-do occupation where people have to be experienced in a number of the following: engineering, interacting, creating, developing, innovating, managing, manufacturing, modelling, and systems believing. But technology also gives us different products which can be utilized for excellent or ill or where the advantages are disputed and likewise the processes involved in producing and using innovation indicates that we should all take an interest in whether it supplies us and everybody else with a sustainable future.

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