Is music a good metaphor for technology?

In this Christmas season the airwaves are full of "Christmas music". This is music that has strong religious roots, with lots of it having been composed decades or even centuries ago. It is quite different that that which one would find in the various music awards ceremonies each year. Of course, there is also a genre of children's Christmas music, including Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, that gets played not only in media specific to children.

In general, the market for music is very segmented. Not only do different cultures call for different kinds of music, but so do different occasions and different age groups. A symphony orchestra plays a different kind of music than does an opera, a Broadway musical, a rock band, or a country band.

Music is available from medieval liturgical composers, from classical composers of many centuries, from folk traditions (implying long dead original composers, adapted by others over the years), as well as from people writing today.

Similarly, there are many technologies, each designed for a different purpose. The most appropriate technology may often depend on the culture of its users or beneficiaries.

Think of classical music, which may have been composed centuries ago, played on instruments of a kind that the composer would not have known, which were actually built decades in the past, performed by people a few years ago, and played now on CD or broadcast. It combines inputs from many times and places as it is used today.

So too may a modern technology combine inventions from many historical times into a single modern design. Thus a modern automobile includes inventions such as the wheel, the internal combustion engine, refined metals, plastics, and electronic control invented at different times in different places but combined into a single modern system.