来源：《彭博商业周刊》
刊登日期：2021年4月9日
超纲词：catchall，manifold，suffix，etymology，artisan，synonymous，encompass，nuanced，devoid
Has the descriptor “technology” exhausted its usefulness? Facebook, DoorDash, and Qualcomm are all, in day-to-day expression, tech companies. But they’re very different businesses. The first earns its money by selling advertising space, the second is a food delivery business, and the third makes semiconductors. Facebook and DoorDash have heaps of software, but Qualcomm is the only company whose actual product is technology.
“technology”这个描述词是否已经用尽了它的用处？Facebook、DoorDash和高通都是我们日常表达中的科技公司。但它们是完全不同的企业。第一家公司通过出售广告位赚钱，第二家是外卖平台，第三家是半导体公司。Facebook和DoorDash拥有大量的软件，高通是唯一一家实际产品是技术的公司。
It has become a catchall. There are now manifold offspring: adtech, biotech, cleantech, fintech, foodtech, proptech, and more. As each contains the industry it serves, perhaps we can start to drop the “-tech” suffix.
technology已成为一个包罗万象的词语。现在有多种后代：adtech、biotech、cleantech、fintech、foodtech、proptech等等。由于每个词都包含它所服务的行业，也许我们可以开始去掉“-tech”后缀。
The meaning wasn’t always so expansive. Until the 1930s, in line with its ancient Greek etymology, it applied primarily to the study of the technical arts, according to the historian Eric Schatzberg. Hence the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was founded in 1861 to study and teach applied science and engineering rather than to study and teach “technology.”
technology的意义并不总是那么宽泛。根据历史学家埃里克·沙茨伯格的说法，直到20世纪30年代，technology与它的古希腊词源一致，主要用于技术美术的研究。因此，麻省理工学院于1861年成立，其宗旨是研究和教授应用科学和工程，而不是研究和教授“technology”。
But English lacked an equivalent to the French technique and German Technik. The English word “technique” hadn’t caught up with the innovations of the Industrial Revolution, and it still applied solely to the way in which an artist or artisan performed a skill. So where we might talk about oil painting as an artistic technique in English, Lufthansa Technik is the engineering division that maintains and repairs the German airline’s fleet of planes.
但是英语缺少与法语technique和德语Technik相对应的词语。英语中的“technique”一词没有跟上工业革命的革新，它仍然只适用于艺术家或工匠表演一种技能的方式。所以，在英语中，我们可能会说油画是一种艺术technique；在德语中，汉莎Technik是负责维护和修理航空公司机队的工程部门。
In the absence of an appropriate term, social theorists in the early 20th century started lending the word “technology” a broader definition that made it synonymous with the practices and principles of the industries it studied. Then, in the 1920s, the historian Charles Beard began prominently associating technology with progress, the final ingredient in our modern-day understanding of the term.
由于缺乏合适的术语，20世纪初，社会理论家开始给“technology”一词更广泛的定义，使其成为其所研究行业的实践和原则的同义词。然后，在20世纪20年代，历史学家查尔斯·比尔德开始把technology与进步显著地联系起来，而进步是我们现代对这个词理解的最后一个要素。
Technology has accelerated into every corner of the economy over the past 30 years. The word already encompassed manufacturing, industry, invention, applied science, and the machine. The S&P 500 now has 74 information technology companies that collectively account for 25% of the index’s weighting, up from the 35 that represented just 6.6% of weighting in 1990.
在过去的30年里，technology已经加速发展到经济的每个角落。这个词已经涵盖了制造业、工业、发明、应用科学和机器。标准普尔500指数目前有74家信息technology公司占该指数权重的25%，而1990年只有35家占指数权重的6.6%。
We need a more nuanced way to talk about cutting-edge innovation. Describing a firm as a technology company tells you nothing about its business. Because when everything is technology, it becomes a classification that’s devoid of meaning.
我们需要一种更微妙的方式来谈论尖端创新。将一家公司描述为technology公司并不会告诉你它的业务。因为当一切都是technology的时候，它就变成了一种没有意义的分类。