Abstract

Technology is an instrument for problem-solving. What technology is developed or used depends upon the nature of the defined problem. Defining the nature of problems and approaches to address them are cognitive not technological concerns. They depend upon experiential knowledge, the suggestions from which delineate what technology needs to be used or developed. The greater the knowledge-intensity of technology, the more the separation of problem definition from technical application gets blurred. The greater the blurring, the more explicit knowledge becomes in economic production. This explicit knowledge is being embodied in knowledge-intensive technologies such as expert systems, process simulation, flexible manufacturing software programs, and other artificial-intelligence-based industrial applications. This embodiment fuses the reasoning process of defining problems with technical means of addressing them. Effective use of explicated knowledge depends upon understanding how that knowledge is constructed. Epistemology focuses on criteria for constructing knowledge. Analyzing the changing nature of technology requires exploring epistemological concerns of knowledge construction and use. My hypothesis is that "localness" of knowledge criteria affects how knowledge-intensive technologies will be designed and used within differing epistemological traditions. ;I explore a foundational and point-instant epistemological tradition by describing how their respective knowledge criteria created particular relationships with knowledge. These criteria are gleaned from a variety of symbolic expressions which comprise any and all "cultures" such as literature, painting, poetry, and structures of both spoken and written languages. Thus, I suggest an approach by which forms of symbolic expressions may be seen as a system of creating, maintaining, and perpetuating local relationships with knowledge. ;I suggest how these local relationships with knowledge affect how problems are defined and hence technology developed. Just-in-time is used as an example of a point-instant emphasis on process technologies. I conclude by suggesting that delineating knowledge criteria adds a "speculative instrument" for comparative policy and societal analysis