Here’s a great reminder that technology properly understood is not just the gizmo, it’s the human-gizmo interaction.
The old people apartments where Mom lives some time ago added big-screen TV’s on the wall between the elevators on every floor. The idea was to use them as a messaging system, giving residents up-to-date information on stuff. Some improvisation has been required:
creative use of technology
This is just a funeral notice correction. My favorite bit was the creative way the residents used it to circumvent HIPAA federal medical privacy rules when one of them ended up in the hospital. The institution is not allowed to release health care information on a resident, but the residents scrounged it up among themselves and posted notes on the TV by the elevator – updates on how she was doing, which hospital room, visiting hours, etc.
When I was teaching, I made a point to note that techniques are also technologies. Knowing how to build and maintain a fire, and using it to cook palatable food, doesn’t require any particular gadgets, but it’s a technology every bit as much as a computer or cell phone.