Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millenniumby Robert Friedel
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. It's now available as an ebook on the MIT press portal http://mitpress-ebooks.mit.edu/product/culture-improvement no reviews | add a review
How technological change in the West has been driven by the pursuit of improvement- a history of technology, from plows and printing presses to penicillin, the atomic bomb, and the computer.Why does technology change over time, how does it change, and what difference does it make? In this sweeping, ambitious look at a thousand years of Western experience, Robert Friedel argues that technological change comes largely through the pursuit of improvement-the deep-rooted belief that things could be done in a better way. What Friedel calls the "culture of improvement" is manifested every day in the ways people carry out their tasks in life-from tilling fields and raising children to waging war. Improvements can be ephemeral or lasting, and one person's improvement may not always be viewed as such by others. Friedel stresses the social processes by which we define what improvements are and decide which improvements will last and which will not. These processes, he emphasizes, have created both winners and losers in history. Friedel presents a series of narratives of Western technology that begin in the eleventh century and stretch into the twenty-first. Familiar figures from the history of invention are joined by others-the Italian preacher who described the first eyeglasses, the dairywomen displaced from their control over cheesemaking, and the little-known engineer who first suggested a grand tower to Gustav Eiffel. Friedel traces technology from the plow and the printing press to the internal combustion engine, the transistor, and the space shuttle. Friedel also reminds us that faith in improvement can sometimes have horrific consequences, as improved weaponry makes warfare ever more deadly and the drive for improving human beings can lead to eugenics and even genocide. The most comprehensive attempt to tell the story of Western technology in many years, engagingly written and lavishly illustrated, A Culture of Improvement documents the ways in which the drive for improvement has shaped our modern world. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNone
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)303.48Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Social Processes Social change Causes of changeLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
Connections
Tick-Tock and Other Pulses of the West
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: May 21, 2007
Mr. Friedel surveys the kinds of inventions and technologies that developed in the West over centuries, compiling a roster of innovation that encompasses everything from textiles to time telling. Under his firm touch it begins to be possible to feel something like the primal pulse of this culture.