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 60
... technical process or contrivance, and larger patterns of similarity or divergence that might illuminate such discoveries. Even if the search for explanations of single contributions often proves discouraging, a survey of larger patterns ...
... technical heritage was the role of potential users, consumers, or investors. Frequently, their suggestions or demands contributed substantially to the process of innovation by envisioning needed features and stimulating the search for ...
... technical activities; and their evolving threshholds of technoscientific capability. More selectively and broadly, its focus at times widens to include the relationship of technology to governmental initiatives and structures ...
... Technical and economic considerations cannot be rigorously partitioned, although they were frequently invoked independently, by different individuals, at different points in the hierarchy of decision processes. Much of the available ...
... technical, legal, and business training and assistance than men, the taking out of patents in their own names was until fairly recently only rarely a practical possibility. Until the passage of the series of Married Women's Property ...
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 |