Technology - solution to a problem

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During a lunch, our boss is showing off his version of NFC iPhone - sticking an octopus card at the back of the iPhone. He elaborates that, from the dictionary, technology means a solution to a problem.

I am a bit skeptical, not because of the definition but his interpretation.

Using technology to solve a problem is always right, but one of the semantic is missing in the statement - quality of the solution. For example, cars in the early days are powered by steam engine, it sucessfully substituted moving cars by animals but they are slow and break down easily. 

If the easiest approach is always taken, we are sacrificing quality for speed.

Let me share with you a story. We have a system that would send goods picking message to the warehouse system. Overtime, there are messages gone missing which results in late order delivery. The current approach to transmit the message is to replicate the data via some intermediate data table. There are times that data failed to replicate, which is due to network or database level issues. A developer is working on a change, suggesting to write directly to the warehouse system instead of relying on the intermediate tables.

Seems to be a logical move as writing data directly to the target system get around the issues of replication. But I have to pull him back, and reminded him on the coupling now increases. Any schema change on the warehouse system would break our application, and not to mention our system's availabilty is now depending on the warehouse system as well. 

Like a clown juggling balls, architect juggle the decision around technical attributes. 

As the architect is the person responsible to device a solution to a problem, one of the challenge is finding the optimal sacrifice, or finding the right solution. It is our job to explain to the user, on all the concerns taken. We are responsible for the end product, not only delivering it but ensure it works all the time efficiently. And we are not only dealing with the delivering team, but also with the business team, remind and persuade them that things are not always that simple.