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. |
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... considerably more ambitious enterprise. Until the fall of 1993, however, with administrative responsibilities at the Smithsonian Institution continually supervening, my efforts were largely confinedto a progressively wider scanning of ...
... considerably larger technological fieldon which this book will concentrate—the one culminating in industrial scale, methods, organization, and ultimately the propensity to generate new inventions as a fundamental property of the system ...
... considerable, if debatable, evidence in support of them. More debatable still is the proposition that they exhibit a regular periodicity of about a half-century, and that, as Schumpeter originally held, this can be closely tied to ...
... considerable degree of linkage between innovative technologies and changing structural features of the society and economy certainly emerges as plausible from this account. But nothing yet, and no compelling avenue of further ...
... considerable detail enlarges upon these themes. The authors cast doubt on whether Edison's position was the only technologically practical alternative, or even the most economically advantageous one. They challenge, in short, “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 |