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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... further and take them in entirely new directions. But at what risk, and to whom? Advancing technology has also meant that risks may be devastating but long-delayed, beyond our capacity to detect at the outset. What is an acceptable role ...
... Further perspectives are provided by corporate strategists and makers and critics of federal policies for technology. Although I have tried to draw judiciously upon all these sources, this book primarily embodies the reflect ions of an ...
... further development. Only by recognizing the embedded, interactive as- pect of what are also originative processes are we adequately prepared to understand later deflect ions in the direction of technological change that respond to ...
... further, previously unanticipated innovations. Obviously, not all innovations are uniformly positive in their effects. Technological means are, after all, just as crucial for coercion and exploitation as for more benevolent purposes ...
... further reinforcement is needed, it is perhaps provided by the preponderant role that universities, with their devotion to basic research, have over the last century or so come to play in intellectual life. But the consequence is, in ...
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 |