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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... and innovations are necessary but not sufficientsteps in the pursuit of these objectives. Their ultimate importance depends on the extent to which they are not only adopted for the uses originally envisioned PATHS OF FIRE 5.
... originally envisioned but incorporated in descending levels of further, previously unanticipated innovations. Obviously, not all innovations are uniformly positive in their effects. Technological means are, after all, just as crucial ...
... originally. “But all these required further subsystems, to monitor and control their performance when they ran into limitations.”39 A number of attempts have been made to provide a quantitative expression of the clustering of ...
... originally held, this can be closely tied to business cycles. Advocates of so-called long waves identify them, in particular, with lengthy, fairly regular “Kondrarieff” cycles of rising and falling prices, aggregate output, and ...
... originally independent elements and to cast doubt upon any alternatives.50 Yet “the precise place to be accorded individual economic action in the evolution of modern technological systems” is controversial ground on which to venture ...
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 |