Technology is the seed that spawns the pain that abounds in modern life, from hunger to misogyny, racism to homophobia, and war to ecological collapse. The solution, therefore, is to demolish industrial society and return to non-technical ways of doing things. Or the person said, when I go to the bookstore, I see a huge number of alienating, anti-social tracts polluting our minds. I think we would easily perceive that the person dramatically missed the boat in apportioning blame. Instead of asking what it is about our society's institutions that causes dwellings or books to often be selected in their harmful rather than uplifting incarnations, the person has leaped to condemn housing and writing per se, and has also diverted attention from the real underlying issues.
Applied science is one definition.
In other words, taking what we learn and embodying it in things we create for use. A shoe is a technology, as is an assembly line, vaccine, nylon, a shotgun, computer, nuclear bomb, wire, pencil, etc. For the sake of discussion, make believe you can see a vast plain of every technology humans could ever conceivably create. The kernel of truth in Una's perspective is that part of the answer is, yes, the technology that has come before affects what can be had in the future. But the far more important answer is that technologies are chosen because they are serviceable to those who decide what will be utilized.