It is often suggested that we live in a technological age. Although it is rarely made clear exactly what this statement means, or why or in what ways previous ages are thought not to be technological, most of us seem to agree that technology plays an important role in our lives. We may also agree that this role is becoming increasingly important. In all kinds of daily activities such as buying a bus ticket, guessing how the weather will change, listening to music, paying for shopping at a supermarket, archiving family photos or borrowing a book from the library, we all experience a constant prodding to our routine or ‘normal’ ways of doing things that can be traced to some or other new technological development. For the most part, moreover, such developments come into being in ways, and for reasons, that lie outside of our control. In other words, we all, through our everyday activities, experience technology's power as an external agent of change.

This experience suggests a range of important questions. To what extent is it possible or desirable to influence the introduction of new technology? To what extent do different technologies determine or constrain the kinds of social changes that follow or accommodate them? Do societies have broad trends or characteristics that are related to the amount or form of technology that have emerged within them – for example, can it be said that people are more or less connected to each other in virtue of the technology they use? Does technology bring with it opportunities for a better life or tend to smuggle in unnecessary problems? Does the form or speed of change of different technologies matter? Is technology always neutral, only taking on good or bad features in some particular context of use? Is it even possible or meaningful to talk in general about ‘technology’ at all?

Such questions will be familiar to many if not most of us. They have been the lifeblood of science fiction since the beginning of the genre. More formally, or academically, such questions have occupied a wide variety of social theorists since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. Recently, contributions concerned with such questions have been organised together as constituents of a ‘philosophy of technology’.