This journal is to present my thought on the history of technology and its importance. I agree with Hallström and Gyberg (2011) that the history of technology is important in providing a panoramic view of technological change, but I further argue that the historical approach to technology should not fall into a value-free recount of technological transition but, rather, commit itself into the genealogy of technology.
Determinism is manifested and readily spotted everywhere. The spirit of inevitability permeates the discourse of economics, politics, education, and technology. To thrive, determinism needs an ahistorical world wherein zombie ideologies never die, innovation always equates with progress and success, and crises can be interpreted as a necessary evil. When human beings are turned into inertia bodies, privatization and profitization of everything with technologies will be no longer unethical.
Paul Freire (2000) once pointed out that human beings are a historical animal, and the historical task for them is to overthrow the dehumanizing condition for everyone. Therefore, to be a human, I must immerse myself in history, specifically the history of the oppressed that will not appear in textbooks or be heard in dominant discourse and act on my critical understanding of social injustice.
For Freire and Foucault, the history of technology cannot fall into the value-free recount of inevitable linearity but has to take on the genealogical status of history to uncover the power struggle, hidden curriculum, and multiple factors behind the Truth we have perceived and are taught to know.
Excellent points about the values, often unspoken and unacknowledged, that permeate history. We need to keep an open eye to this and Foucault and Freire, among others, point us to a method to do this.