Technology vs. Technique

Technology facilitates the erosion of technique in many cases. Golfers are acutely aware of this phenomenon: why work to improve your swing when you can just get new clubs made with a bit more carbon fiber or magnesium? That’s sort of the point of technology: make things easier, faster, more robust and efficient. Skill and technique take the scenic route to the destination of high-quality, consistent results.

Why learn to chop vegetables when you can get a food processor that will reduce anything into whatever shapes and sizes you need? I suppose that in the near future we’ll have laser knives to raster across piles of vegetables and any discussion of technique will be reduced to when the best time is to check for firmware updates. Granton-edge knives—the ones with the little dimples on the sides of the blade—are supposed to keep food like potatoes from sticking to it while you’re slicing them. But you know what works better? Using a different technique: drawing the knife toward you, dragging the tip all the way through the potato to cut off each slice instead of a mostly downward chopping technique.

This is perhaps to say that it’s a two-way street: while technology relieves us of a certain amount of technique and effort most of the time, when technology fails to live up to the hype (or it just plain breaks), technique saves the day. From knowing just how to jiggle the handle on the toilet to turning the sheet pan 180-degrees halfway through your bake, to turning your smart device “all the way off” and then back on: having knowledge and skill above and beyond how technology is “supposed to work” can be invaluable. The internet abounds with tips about how to work around almost any software bug or “hack” a variety of tools.

Technology is often limited by whatever the interface is designed to let you do and the amount of charge that its battery will hold. Technique, when properly understood, gives you the ability to get results under a wider range of conditions. It might even help give you insight into principles.

And an understanding of principles gives you a hundred fold more options than a slightly fancier technology, if for no other reason than you can grab a different tool or even make one, and bend it to your purpose.