I've long thought that the best definition of "technology" is "a prosthetic." In this post I'm going to explain what I mean by that. I won't engage the boundaries between science, engineering and technology in this post, and I won't go into much detail about the model itself. My goal is to inflate the concept and compare it with what we know about technology.
I used to think I got this definition from McLuhan. But he mentions the specific equation once as far as I know and dances around prosthetics everywhere else. McLuhan is much less interested in what I'm going to call The Prosthetic Model than I hope every time I go back to him. This philosophical definition of technology, as just and only a prosthetic, matches my personal experience with technology. This is as a person who's profession was abstract technology-creation and -use, and an avid technology user, and as someone who's thought philosophically about technology and technology use his whole life.
