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. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 46
... Sector and Fund Source, 1960–1993 Basic/Applied Research Funding by Selected Federal Agencies R & D Expenditures by U.S. Manufacturers, 1958–1990 Earned Doctoral Degrees by Field and Percentage of Women, 1960–1991 Percentage of U.S. ...
... sectors, and periods in which a technology-oriented logic governs,”1 no convincing case can be made that technology has ever consistently served as an impersonal, extrasocietal agency of change in its own right. Relationships between ...
... sectors of modern Western society where market relations today play a dominant part, market “an omalies” and apparent failures as a result of the confluence of other institutional forces are now a subject of increasing scholarly ...
... sectors. But a braking in the pace of technological advance is not in evidence. In fact, technological innovations have been substantially responsible for continuing gains in productivity that threaten to make increasing numbers of ...
... sectors with comparable training and professional attainments. Providing a degree of protection against cyclical economic downturns have been several generations of striking economic successes with new, high-tech products and processes ...
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 |