Why not just call this vast accumulation of invention and creation culture? In fact, some people do. In this usage, culture would include all the technology we have invented so far, plus the products of those inventions, plus anything else our collective minds have produced. And if by “culture” one means not just local ethnic cultures but the aggregate culture of the human species, then this term very nearly represents this vast sphere of technology that I have been talking about.
But the term culture falls short in one critical way. It is too small. What Beckmann recognized in 1802 when he baptized technology was that the things we were inventing were spawning other inventions in a type of self-generation. Technical arts enabled new tools, which launched new arts, which birthed new tools, ad infinitum. Artifacts were becoming so complex in their operation and so interconnected in their origins that they formed a new whole: technology.
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking, 2010. (via carvalhais)