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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... greater consistency and clarity—an d with unquestionably greater economy as well, overlooking some personal regret over the necessary disappearance of many of my numerous excursions into anecdotal detail. He has my warmest thanks for ...
... . There is indeed a place for an essentialist approach of this sort, especially when, as in this book, it is intended that a wide-ranging reconnaissance of surface topography will encourage later plowing to greater depths. CHAPTER 1 6.
... greater depths. But an adjoining, permanent place must also be found for another stance, even if the two can only coexist in a degree of tension, that is better able to capture human complexity [whose] goal is generating alternatives to ...
... greater weight of responsibility for growth should be assigned to entrepreneurs than to inventors.19 On the other hand, no less forcefully, Simon Kuznets maintains the contrary emphasis. While recognizing that there is and must be an ...
... greater time for religious observance, family or community rites of passage, or merely leisure. Population growth has no doubt been another alternative outcome of improved productive efficiency. Especially under conditions of ...
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 |