Technological Systems and Their Impacts
This domain examines technology as systems and the consequences-intended and unintended-of those systems. Expect questions on the universal systems model, the resources technology draws on, the core technology contexts, and frameworks for judging social, economic, and environmental impact.
The universal systems model
Inputs → process → outputs, with feedback comparing output to a goal and adjusting the process. Open-loop systems lack feedback (a timed sprinkler); closed-loop systems use it (a thermostat). Subsystems nest inside larger systems, and the whole can behave in ways no subsystem does alone-emergent properties.
Resources and contexts
Seven resources: people, information, materials, tools and machines, energy, capital, time. Core technology contexts typically include biotechnology, construction, energy and power, information and communication, manufacturing, transportation, and medical or agricultural technologies.
Judging impacts
- Impacts are social, cultural, economic, environmental, and political, and they interact.
- Unintended consequences are the norm; assess them with risk–benefit analysis and technology assessment.
- The rebound effect: efficiency gains can raise total consumption.
- Planned obsolescence shortens product life by design; sustainability asks whether a system can persist.
- Life-cycle assessment traces material and energy flows from extraction through use to disposal or reuse; cradle-to-cradle designs for recapture.
- Technology transfer moves a technology between contexts; appropriate technology fits local resources, skills, and culture.
Worked example
For a single-use bottled-water system: inputs include petroleum-derived PET, water, energy, and capital; the process covers bottle manufacture, filling, distribution, and retail; outputs include the product, revenue, emissions, and waste. Feedback arrives as recycling rates, sales, and regulation. A life-cycle view shows the dominant impacts sit in bottle production and transport, not consumer disposal-so a policy targeting only litter misses most of the footprint.
Traps that cost marks
Calling any new device "better" without criteria; confusing invention (making something new) with innovation (successful adoption at scale); treating feedback as an output rather than a control signal; and assuming impacts are only environmental.