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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... least partly as a derivative of the achievements of science. If one accepts this standpoint, at least for the eras before the onset of general literacy, are we doomed never to know whether technology was more than an unreflect ive ...
... least several centuries, firstin Britain and later and more strongly in the United States, has been a consistent aim to design new technologies that would not only meet existing needs or demands but would create and satisfy previously ...
... least in principle the substance and timing of each of these achievements seems conducive to being more sharply definedthan the continuous processes of change that they precipitated. That in turn indirectly lends weight to a belief in ...
... least to some extent. In many cases the sharing is intentional, in others despite efforts to keep findings privy. But in any case, that the new technology ultimately goes public means that technology advances through a “cultural ...
... a corpus of comprehensive, generalized knowledge with recognized frontiers and strategies for its advancement. Its practitioners form at least a loosely bounded community with shared commitments and values. There is PATHS OF FIRE 7.
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 |