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 58
... success in a fiercelycompetitive world. But it, too, carries familiar risks of policy inflexibility and economic inefficiency. A need to strike an appropriate balance between such risks and opportunities is implicit in public discussion ...
... success. The story that cannot yet be told is the one that adequately takes into account plans and efforts that were cut short, orphaning their technological contributions, by the ever-present likelihood of business failure. Human ...
... successes with new, high-tech products and processes. Mutually supportive corporate linkages also help to insulate their work from politically inspired brakes or shifts of direction. This science-and-technology nexus is at the heart of ...
... success of this “perennial gale of creative destruction.” Herein lies the essence of the entrepreneurial function—a ... successful entrepreneurs must intuitively envision their potential and seek out or devise for them new and more ...
... success.” This argument has a “family resemblance,” as they note, to one on which David himself has collaborated with Brian Arthur on the way in which inefficienttechnolo- gies are sometimes “locked-in” by accidents of priority or other ...
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 |