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This content is associated with The Open University Computing and IT certifications.
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The role and impact of innovation in both our personal and working lives is ever growing. Understanding how individuals form innovation and how innovation forms people's interactions with each other and the natural world is very important - not only for those who research study, develop and carry out new innovations, however also for all those individuals and organisations that have to utilize those technologies in their working and individual lives.

Technology is not a neutral word. Different individuals will give it various meaning depending upon their viewpoint and context.

Members of the Faculty of Technology are no various, however for several years we have actually adopted one particular definition of technology that reflects our own objectives and goals:

There are 3 important elements to this definition:

1. Technology has to do with taking action to satisfy a human requirement instead of simply understanding the operations of the world, which is the goal of science. The development of the microscopic lense was driven by a need to explore the world of the small, beyond our unaided vision. This technological option to a long standing issue has in turn allowed us to understand more the workings of the world which in turn has led to the development of more innovations.

2. It uses a lot more than clinical knowledge and consists of values as much as facts, practical craft knowledge as much as theoretical knowledge. The iPod is an example of where the physics of making a small gadget carry so much music is married with creative design to make an iconic should have device.

3. It includes organised ways of doing things. It covers the designated and unintentional interactions between products (devices, devices, artifacts) and the individuals and systems who make them, use them or are affected by them through various procedures. Lots of people like to drink coffee, frequently in a coffee shop. That coffee might have originated from trees which have been bred specifically for increased yields that support a small farmer and his household but that needs pesticides that were established and produced in another country. The gathered coffee beans will themselves be transported all over the world, to be processed and put in packages which are distributed to shops that then make the cup of coffee in a polystyrene cup that was made for the purpose however which then needs to dealt with and so on. Every option we make depends on, and feeds, an extremely synergistic and far reaching lifestyle where some have much and some have little.

Technology is a hands-on, can-do profession where individuals need to be competent in much of the following: engineering, interacting, designing, developing, innovating, managing, production, modelling, and systems thinking. But innovation likewise gives us numerous items which can be utilized for good or ill or where the advantages are challenged and similarly the procedures included in producing and utilizing technology means that we should all take an interest in whether it provides us and everybody else with a sustainable future.

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