Tools and Artefacts – Synergistic Accounting Part 5.
Artefact, “artificial production, anything made or modified by human art,”
Tool = tol “mechanical instrument for manual use, implement used by a craftsman or labourer, weapon,
Where would we be today without tools and artefacts, what we might also call technology? And what would we do if the technology systems we have in place fail? What would happen if the internet went down? Pretty much every system we have today would crash. It would be a disaster of epic proportions. Zero access to money, travel, road systems, energy and most of our communications.
But Tools and Artefacts, when considered under the domain of Synergistic Accounting, are not just things like iPhones and servers and networks.
Tools and Artefacts include the processes that take something from one state to another and deploy artifacts and communities to create a result. Taking random numbers from a sheet and organising them into something meaningful is a form of technology. To deliver a 12-week training program to people around the world is a technology. It may also deploy artifacts of technology, like the internet, phone systems, websites, VOIP, written and recorded material, etc. But the actual sequence of events, the process through which people participate, is in itself a technology. Without people going through the experience, it is nothing.
Writing a blog post has multiple technological components to it. First, I am using artifacts like the computer, the web browser, WordPress software, and plugins. I am also deploying my own process of writing, which is itself a technology. And often, I might impart steps to take that would also be considered technology. My blog posts are unique in that I write with my own voice. This is a technology.
The process of a single bee gathering nectar and delivering pollen is a form of technology. The complex system inside a beehive is technology. Nature is alive with technological systems that we are only now beginning to discover and understand. When we lose them, the devastation can be catastrophic.
Language is a tool and an artefact. As are dance, music, art and photography.
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Greek tekhnologia ‘systematic treatment’, from tekhnē ‘art, craft’ + -logia (word, reason)
Often, we forget to include the whole of technology in our valuation. The very unique contributions that people and nature make to their own process are rarely accounted for.
Synergistic Accounting seeks to correct that.
To read Part 2. What is matter?
Money – but one element of six to consider in Synergistic Accounting – Part 3.
Knowledge and the pain of being discounted for your knowledge – Synergistic Accounting Part 4.
Tools and Artefacts – Synergistic Accounting Part 5.
Why value Warm Data? – inviting our humanity back to the table. Synergistic Accounting Part 6.
Well being – evidence of systems and humanity working – Synergistic Accounting Part 7
Deploying Synergistic Accounting – Part 8
Photo credit: TempusVolat via Compfight
