Technography is a real term in the social sciences: the study of technology in use, as ethnography studies people. It asks what a tool actually does in the hands of those using it, rather than what it was designed to do. That discipline matters more as technology assessment shifts from an academic exercise into a policy concern. Governments regulating technology need to understand it in practice, not in specification. The name suits a research centre, a technology assessment body, a consultancy doing user research, a publication, or an academic programme, and the .