Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist's Inquiry into Western TechnologyPrinceton University Press, 2012 M09 17 - 360 páginas Technology, perhaps the most salient feature of our time, affects everything from jobs to international law yet ranks among the most unpredictable facets of human life. Here Robert McC. Adams, renowned anthropologist and Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, builds a new approach to understanding the circumstances that drive technological change, stressing its episodic, irregular nature. The result is nothing less than a sweeping history of technological transformation from ancient times until now. Rare in antiquity, the bursts of innovations that mark the advance of technology have gradually accelerated and now have become an almost continuous feature of our culture. Repeatedly shifting in direction, this path has been shaped by a host of interacting social, cultural, and scientific forces rather than any deterministic logic. Thus future technological developments, Adams maintains, are predictable only over the very short term. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 93
... Century Gains in Agricultural Productivity Percentage Shares of Agriculture and Industry, Value Added in Constant Prices Percentage of Steel Produced by Various Methods, 1870–1940 Energy Sources as Percentage of Aggregate Consumption ...
... century (in both England and the United States), patents would automatically become the property of the husband. It is thus not surprising that women are credited with only about 1 percent of patents that were awarded during the ...
... demand for one another. Such was the case in this country during the nineteenth century, firstwith railroads and steelmaking and then with the steam turbine, electric power generation, and electric lights. A similar, somewhat CHAPTER 1 20.
... century, for example, no doubt substantially slowed their replacement by steam engines as a source of motive power for nineteenth-century factories. These cautionary considerations suggest that technological transfer and adoption tends ...
... century or so it has come to assume fundamental importance. Today, in fact, it will presently be shown that there is ... centuries or so. Consistent with this general position, and also expressed at the outset of this book, is the ...
Contenido
3 | |
36 | |
3 Technology and the New European Society | 69 |
4 England as the Workshop of the World | 104 |
The American System Emerges | 138 |
6 The United States Succeeds to Industrial Leadership | 173 |
7 The Competitive Global System | 212 |
Technological Change in a Borderless World | 253 |
Notes | 279 |
References Cited | 301 |
Index | 327 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist's Inquiry into Western Technology Robert M. Adams Vista previa limitada - 2012 |
Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist's Inquiry Into Western Technology Robert McCormick Adams Sin vista previa disponible - 1996 |