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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... population finds itself caught up in overlapping webs of electronic communication. New tools of data storage and analysis provide a basis for conducting research and pursuing comparative advantage in ever-intensifying international ...
... population, settlement, and resource-extraction systems; and business and economic organizations and strategies. Broad as this listing is, any anthropologist like myself will readily acknowledge that it, too, is naturally embedded ...
... Population growth has no doubt been another alternative outcome of improved productive efficiency. Especially under conditions of uncertainty, larger family units heightened security not only for families as CHAPTER 1 16.
... population, with some forming substrates or niches that allow the existence of others.” Positive feedbacks make the behavior of these systems nonlinear, with even modest increases having a greatly magnifiedef- fect through the creation ...
... population that is uninfected. Ultimately, near-stability is reached. The difficultywith the epidemic model is that, in key respects, it invokes only the diffusion perspective. Adoption is seen as unproblematic, an involuntary act 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 |