tumbles over and over in the sky, the film shifts to thousands of years later as a similarly-shaped spacecraft moves through space on its way to the moon. Director Stanley Kubrick thus develops technology as a continuous history, with new developments building on old developments leading to the next stage, always developing new applications so human beings can do more than they could before. This is precisely the way technology does develop, enabling human beings to hunt, prepare food, build shelters, create clothing, protect him or herself from the elements, and generally reshape nature into man-made artifacts serving human needs. Technology is cumulative so that each generation does not have to learn all the lessons about tools from the beginning but can instead add to what exists and create something even newer and more useful. Volti offers a comprehensive definition of technology as "a system based on the application of knowledge, manifested in physical objects and organizational forms, for the attainment of specific goals" (Volti 6).
3. Differentiate Science/Technology
Science and technology are related, but they also diverge in certain respects. The development of technology often depends on scientific inquiry and discovery. A paradigm is a shared set of understandings. Science is an attempt to explain the natural world and to discover the truth of natural phenomena. Yet, the fact that there can be competing and incommensurable paradigms on the same subject matter shows that while science may seek "reality," at some point it can only achieve a certain explanation, a paradigm, which becomes the springboard for further inquiry and which may change over time. Theories are the explanations offered, and as long as they work, they are accepted. One of the challenges brought to science is over the view that science explains a world that exists independently of or prior to knowledge produced about it. There is some d...