1. General concept. The Greek word τέχνη embraces all “artificial” production of things by man, as opposed to their spontaneous, “natural” growth and development. Starting from this, technology can be taken as synonymous with “art” in the widest sense, in contradistinction to “nature”. It is one of the basic ways in which the world of nature is freely and consciously transformed into the world of man, a cultural process, therefore, which consists essentially in material production. Within this cat…