Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture

Description

To most people, technology has been reduced to computers, consumer goods, and military weapons; we speak of "technological progress" in terms of RAM and CD-ROMs and the flatness of our television screens. In Human-Built World, thankfully, Thomas Hughes restores to technology the conceptual richness and depth it deserves by chronicling the ideas about technology expressed by influential Western thinkers who not only understood its multifaceted character but who also explored its creative potential. Hughes draws on an enormous range of literature, art, and architecture to explore what technology has brought to society and culture, and to explain how we might begin to develop an "ecotechnology" that works with, not against, ecological systems. From the "Creator" model of development of the sixteenth century to the "big science" of the 1940s and 1950s to the architecture of Frank Gehry, Hughes nimbly charts the myriad ways that technology has been woven into the social and cultural fabric of different eras and the promises and problems it has offered. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, optimistically hoped that technology could be combined with nature to create an Edenic environment; Lewis Mumford, two centuries later, warned of the increasing mechanization of American life. Such divergent views, Hughes shows, have existed side by side, demonstrating the fundamental idea that "in its variety, technology is full of contradictions, laden with human folly, saved by occasional benign deeds, and rich with unintended consequences." In Human-Built World, he offers the highly engaging history of these contradictions, follies, and consequences, a history that resurrects technology, rightfully, as more than gadgetry; it is in fact no less than an embodiment of human values.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Other editions

• 

  Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture

  • 2005-05-13
  • 240 pages
  • Ebook
  • University of Chicago Press
• 

  Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture

  • 2004-07-19
  • 223 pages
  • Paperback
  • University of Chicago Press

Similar books

• 

  Animal Sciences: The Biology, Care, and Production of Domestic Animals, Fourth Edition

  By John R. Campbell, M. Douglas Kenealy, Karen L. Campbell

  Timberlake claimed in 1980 that a fundamental problem with Singer's work is the lack of an adequate definition of suffering ...

• 

  Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating Food Systems for a Changing Climate

  By Laura Lengnick

  3. D. Layne. 2013. Tree Fruit: Protecting Your Investment. American/Western Fruit Grower, September/October. 4. R. Snyder and J. Melu-Abreu. 2005. Frost ...

• 

  Biodesign: The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies

  By Stefanos Zenios, Josh Makower, Paul Yock

  At that time, these were in the low $10s of millions. ... be a good partner going forward, even though it takes longer to get the deal done," offered Chess.

• 

  Advanced Signal Processing: A Concise Guide

  By Amir-Homayoon Najmi, Todd Moon

  [ 59 ] S. Kotz , T. J. Kozubowski , and K. Podgorski , The Laplace ... valued signal processing : The proper way to deal with impropriety , ” IEEE Trans .

• 

  Resources for Technical Communication

  By Pearson Education, Pearson Education Staff, David P Pearson Education

  Some documents are annotated; some are left without annotations to provide more flexibility for instructors. This booklet can be packaged at no additional cost with any Longman title in technical communication.

• 

  Chemistry: An Introduction to General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry; Chemistry Study Pack Version 2.0 CD-ROM; The Chemistry of Life CD-ROM;...

  By Karen C. Timberlake

  Chemistry: An Introduction to General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry; Chemistry Study Pack Version 2.0 CD-ROM; The Chemistry of Life CD-ROM;...

• 

  Poultry Science: Fifth Edition

  By Colin G. Scanes, Karen D. Christensen

  The emission rates for ammonia (Casey et al., 2006): • Layers: 116 g NH3 per AU (AU or animal unit or 500 kg). • Broilers: 135 g NH3 per AU (AU or animal unit or 500 kg). Emission rates in different reports vary from less than either 10 ...

• 

  Solid State Materials Chemistry

  By Patrick M. Woodward, Pavel Karen, John S. O. Evans

  [45] B.F. Hoskins, R. Robson, “Design and construction of a new class of scaffolding-like materials comprising infinite polymeric frameworks of 3D-linked molecular rods. A reappraisal of the zinc cyanide and cadmium cyanide structures ...

• 

  Abbreviations Dictionary

  By Dean A. Stahl, Karen Landen

  ... Tallest Mountain Mount Robson—12,972 feet or 3,954 meters—in the Canadian Rockies Canada's Westernmost City Dawson, Yukon Canada's Westernmost Point in Yukon Territory just east of Alaska's Demarcation Point Canary Islands' Largest ...

• 

  Agriculture: A Very Short Introduction

  By Paul Brassley, Richard Soffe

  ACCOUNTING Christopher Nobes ADVERTISING Winston Fletcher AFRICAN AMERICAN RELIGION Eddie S. Glaude Jr AFRICAN HISTORY ... Hugh Bowden ALGEBRA Peter M. Higgins AMERICAN HISTORY Paul S. Boyer AMERICAN IMMIGRATION David A. Gerber AMERICAN ...