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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... importance for granted. Causal relationships, where the evidence allows them to be identified at all, are rarely viewed ... important reservations are in order. First, we should never allow ourselves to overlook the larger truth PREFACE xiii.
... importance. A renewed effort to restore the balance, adding to the richness and complexity of technoscientificinteractions in all periods, is undertaken here. Similarly underweighted, but unfortunately beyond the reach of this or any ...
... important than this technical heritage was the role of potential users, consumers, or investors. Frequently, their ... importance depends on the extent to which they are not only adopted for the uses originally envisioned PATHS OF FIRE 5.
... important ways. First, they are decidedly less random, more situationally responsive or context-dependent, more prone to occur in closely interrelated clusters, and likewise more transformative in the scale and scope of their ...
... important obstacle that is difficultto overcome. Patents are an instructive case in point, and much will be said later about the general deficienciesin patent records as an adequate representation of the sources of significantinventions ...
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 |