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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... widely recognized.29 No less obvious is another characteristic of modern technology—i ts far greater, and growing, complexity. As social units increase in scale and interdependence, most technologies no longer can serve singular ...
... breakthroughs as their potential is recognized and widely exploited. At the same time, the heterogeneity of innovations must be a source of irregularity in the rates at which they occur. Merely to identify a CHAPTER 1 18.
... widely accepted proposition in economics that has overtones not unsympathetic with regard to technological determinism or prime movers. Technological advance has long been regarded as a key component in the otherwise unaccounted for ...
... widely separated in time, to demonstrate any pattern of direct dependency of the latter on the former. Moreover, most accounts of great scientific contributions have systematically underrated the dependence of science itself on ...
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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 |