History of engineering and technology Books
Johns Hopkins University Press Robots in Space
Book SynopsisRather than asking us to suspend disbelief, Robots in Space demands that we accept facts as they evolve.Trade ReviewEntertaining reading. Commercial Dispatch Excellent, eye-opening, horizon-broadening reading! Highly recommended. Choice Noted space historians... breathe new life into the subject by examining its history as well as its possible future. They call for a new vision of human spaceflight-a 'transhuman' program that takes into account current trends in robotics, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and other fields that are rapidly changing the nature of both humans and machines. Air and Space Magazine This short volume manages to capture the history of U.S. space flight, to explain the underpinnings of U.S. space policy and to plot out the possibilities for our future in space in a style that most anyone can enjoy. -- Andrew McMichael Park City Daily News A timely and thought-provoking read, no matter what side of the humans vs. robots debate one is on. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in where our species is ultimately headed in space. Liftoff Should interest any intelligent reader with an interest in the history and future of space exploration, whatever technology is applied. Its mix of historical background and social context, entirely due to the authors' long experience, takes the reader well beyond the usual issues of technical challenge and budget limitations, while numerous selected quotations accentuate the human element. -- Mark Williamson Space Times An examination of the history of the various arguments for sending humans and machines into space, and their relative merits. It is an authoritative, detailed look at how these arguments evolved and what the future of humans and robots in space might hold. -- Jeff Foust Space Review A remarkably well-written and lucid book... about the ongoing debate within the American civil space agency between proponents of human spaceflight and those who advocate robotic or 'unmanned' spaceflight. -- Capt Bryce G. Poole, USAF Air and Space Power JournalTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: A False Dichotomy1. The Human/ Robot Debate2. Human Spaceflight in Popular Culture3. Promoting the Human Dimension4. Robotic Spaceflight in Popular Culture5. The New Space Race6. Interstellar Flight and the Human Future in Space7. Homo sapiens, Transhumanism, and the Postbiological Universe8. An Alternative Paradigm?Appendix: Inaequate WordsNotesIndex
£22.50
Johns Hopkins University Press Home Fires
Book SynopsisThis perspective allows a unique view of the development of an industrial society not just from the ground up but from the hearth up.Trade ReviewThis smartly written and well-informed book focuses on a subject that very few people think about - the history of home heating in America... The writing flows well, making it an enjoyable read. The scholarship is sound. Choice Sean Patrick Adams's slim study touches lightly on this hot topic... The stove does not just heat; it allows us to see the 'connections we all have to wider networks of production, distribution, and consumption. -- Eric Rauchway Times Literary Supplement Home Fires is easily the most thorough and best-grounded account of the coal-based system of heating in the nineteenth-century United States. On the matters it considers, the book is authoritative. Adams, in addition, writes engagingly, constantly illustrating his general points with striking details and vignettes gleaned from extensive research, chiefly in printed primary and secondary sources. -- William B. Meyer New England Quarterly Adams's Home Fires does, indeed, tell a fascinating story in the well-researched methodology of a trained and experienced historian, with a keen interest in using history to learn how to deal with the pressing issues of the future. Journal of American Culture Adams's Home Fires does, indeed, tell a fascinating story in the well-researched methodology of a trained and experienced historian, with a keen interest in using history to learn how to deal with the pressing issues of the future. Journal of American CultureTable of ContentsPrefacePrologue1. How the Industrial Economy Made the Stove2. How Mineral Heat Came to American Cities3. How the Coal Trade Made Heat Cheap4. How the Industrial Hearth Defied Control5. How Steam Heat Found Its LimitsEpilogueNotesSelected Further ReadingIndex
£19.95
Johns Hopkins University Press Coal and Empire
Book SynopsisThe fascinating history of how coal-based energy became entangled with American security.Since the early twentieth century, Americans have associated oil with national security. From World War I to American involvement in the Middle East, this connection has seemed a self-evident truth. But, as Peter A. Shulman argues, Americans had to learn to think about the geopolitics of energy in terms of security, and they did so beginning in the nineteenth century: the age of coal. Coal and Empire insightfully weaves together pivotal moments in the history of science and technology by linking coal and steam to the realms of foreign relations, navy logistics, and American politics. Long before oil, coal allowed Americans to rethink the place of the United States in the world.Shulman explores how the development of coal-fired oceangoing steam power in the 1840s created new questions, opportunities, and problems for U.S. foreign relations and naval strategy. The searcTrade ReviewExciting to read. It is the product of someone who is such a gifted writer. New Books in Science, Technology, and Society Peter Shulman's excellent new book mines the pre-history of the relationship between ideas about energy extraction and the building of the United States as an imperial nation. Explorations in Federal History ... Coal and Empire is a major contribution to foreign policy history and an essential read for any scholar interested in the development of policy and technology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. H-Net Reviews Enlightening reading for anyone interested in the politics and economics of energy. Choice In his exhaustively researched book, Shulman convincingly argues for the centrality of coal to nineteenth-century American domestic and foreign policy, pointing out that 'when seen from the perspective of coal, the great process of industrialization and the emergence of the United States as a global power unfolded at the same time as intertwined processes'... His fast paced and wide-ranging work recounts a number of fascinating episodes central to nineteenth-century American history through the lens of energy needs. Diplomatic History ...[Shulman's] rich text provides a vital contribution to our understanding of how resource exploitation--and hence science and technological change--was woven into the history of economics, international affairs, and domestic politics. Journal of American History Peter A. Shulman's Coal and Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial America offers an intellectual feast for both historians and modern energy scholars. Meticulously researched and expertly written, it attempts to show how an energy fuel, in this instance coal, became an integral part of United States national security in the nineteenth century. Technology and Culture A forceful book--well-written, eye-opening, and analytically sharp...Coal and Empire is essential reading for anyone interested in the deep roots of the modern fossil economy. American Historical Review Regardless of where you stand on the nineteenth-century US imperial question, the resources, technology, and politics behind expanding US interests have long needed the careful treatment Coal and Empire provides. Historical Geography ... the book is an important one, and the histories of more quotidian commodities need more attention more generally. By using coal as a lens Shulman shows its integral place across US history and the development of its global role into the twentieth century. Mariner's MirrorTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Empire and the Politics of Information2. Engineering Economy3. The Economy of Time and Space4. The Slavery Solution5. The Debate over Coaling Station6. Inventing LogisticsConclusionChronological Listing of Cited Congressional Publicationsfrom the United States Serial SetNotesBibliographic EssayIndex
£38.70
Johns Hopkins University Press Fish Sticks Sports Bras and Aluminum Cans
Book SynopsisStudents of consumer studies and the history of technology, as well as scholars and general readers, will be captivated by Josephson's insights into the complex relationship between society and technology.Trade ReviewJosephson's conclusions are guaranteed to make you think of the modern world and its interconnectedness in a different light. 'Sometimes,' he writes 'you should just say, no, refuse that new-fangled fish stick or aluminum soda can or smart phone or online source.' Cosmos ... At its best is original and instructive and compresses a great deal of technical material into a brief and readable form. British Journal for the History of ScienceTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Ocean's Hot Dog2. The Sports Bra3. Sugar, Bananas, and Aluminum Cans4. Mass-Produced Nutrition5. Technology and (Natural) Disasters6. Big ArtifactsConclusionNotesSuggested Further ReadingIndex
£23.85
Johns Hopkins University Press Light It Up
Book SynopsisAn essential study for readers interested in modern warfare, policy makers, and historians of technology, war, and visual and military culture.Trade ReviewExamines how [video game] technologies have affected the training and actual fighting of U.S. marines... Pettegrew's book is filled with interesting and thought-provoking material. Foreign Affairs This book does two things: it addresses a worthwhile subject, and it makes us think. Journal of America's Military PastTable of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. Force Projection and the Marine Eye for Battle1. Shock and Awe and Air PowerNetwork-Centric Warfare, Sensors, and Total Situational AwarenessAchieving Rapid Dominance in IraqKill Boxes, LITENING Pods, and the Third Marine Aircraft Wing"Keep Your Eyes Out," Fair Fighting, and Memories of Killing2. Of War Porn and Pleasure in KillingPornography Is the Theory, and Killing the PracticeClassic Hollywood Combat FilmsMarine Moto on YouTubeThe Iraq War on Television3. Fallujah, First to Fight, and LudologyEnder's Game and the Rise of Simulation in Military Training, 1995–2005From Combat Films to Video GamesThe Value Added to Military TrainingFighting in the Digitized Streets of Beirut4. Counterinsurgency and "Turning Off the Killing Switch"Empathy, General Mattis, and the Profound Paradox of Marine HumanitarianismHaditha, Acute Stress, and the Excesses of Occupying ForceUSMC Literary Culture and Warrior Ethos"Which Way Would You Run?"5. Posthuman WarfightingMarines in Science Fiction and in SpaceThe Postmasculinist Marines and New Optics of CombatThe Gladiator Robot and the Critique of Remote Warfare6. Synthetic Visions of WarBiopolitics and the Costs of WarDigital Culture and the Computational MarineSubjectivity Lives and DiesNotesEssay on Primary SourcesIndex
£27.45
Johns Hopkins University Press Narrative as Virtual Reality 2
Book SynopsisFollowing the cognitive approaches that have rehabilitated immersion as the product of fundamental processes of world-construction and mental simulation, she details the many forms that interactivity has taken-or hopes to take-in digital texts, from determining the presentation of signs to affecting the level of story.Trade ReviewThe revised structure of this second edition helps us navigate the various stops on the tour of virtual narratives on which Ryan energetically and lucidly leads us. As with the first edition, this should be vital reading for anyone interested in fiction and technology, and the technologies of fiction.—British Society for Literature and ScienceTable of ContentsList of Figures and TablesPrefaceIntroductionPart I1. The Two (and Thousand) Faces of the Virtual2. Virtual Reality as Dream and as TechnologyPart II3. The Text as World4. Varieties of ImmersionPart III5. The Text as World versus the Text as Game6. Texts without Worlds7. The Many Forms of Interactivity8. HypertextPart IV9. Participatory Interactivity from Life Situations to Drama10. Chasing the Dream of the Immersive, Interactive NarrativeConclusionNotesWorks CitedIndex
£27.45
Johns Hopkins University Press FastLane
Book SynopsisSince 2000, the National Science Foundation has depended upon its pioneering FastLane e-government system to manage grant applications, peer reviews, and reporting. In this behind-the-scenes account Thomas J. Misa and Jeffrey R. Yost examine how powerful forces of science and computing came together to create this influential grant-management system, assessing its impact on cutting-edge scientific research. Why did the NSF create FastLane, and how did it anticipate the development of web-based e-commerce? What technical challenges did the glitch-prone early system present? Did the switch to electronic grant proposals disadvantage universities with fewer resources? And how did the scientific community help shape FastLane? Foregrounding the experience of computer users, the book draws on hundreds of interviews with scientific researchers, sponsored project administrators, NSF staff, and software designers, developers, and managers.Table of ContentsPreface1. Managing Science2. Origins of E-Government3. Developing a New System4. Principal Investigators as Lead Users5. Research Administrators as Lead Users6. NSF Staff as Legacy Users7. Legacies, Lessons, and ProspectsAppendix A. University Site VisitsAppendix B. Interview Summary StatisticsNotesEssay on SourcesIndex
£27.45
Johns Hopkins University Press The Model T
Book SynopsisRichly illustrated with archival photos from The Henry Ford, The Model T is the definitive history of an iconographic piece of American technology.Trade ReviewIn this commemorative volume, Ford Museum Curator Robert Casey describes how the Model T came to be, against the backdrop of transportation of the day. He features chapters on creating the Model T in concept, manufacturing it, selling it, and owning and driving it. History Wire An extremely handsome, short, informative book about Henry Ford's great creation... A masterpiece. Weekly Standard If one had to buy or read one book about the Model T, this should be the book, for its intelligent text and informative, enjoyable graphics. Choice The Model T: A Centennial History is that rare automotive book that will appeal to scholars and buffs alike. Michigan Historical Review This gripping history is a fine pick for any library including transportation history books on the shelf. Midwest Book Review If there is room on any bookshelf for just one work about Henry Ford's Model T, this is the book that belongs in that space. Technology and Culture All credit to Robert Casey for a well balanced and enjoyable read. -- Gordan Nolan T Topics Just in time for the centennial celebration of the Model T, Robert Casey captures the remarkable story of that car's history and development and of its long-lasting impact on America. -- Howard Gustavson Model T Times Casey's The Model T is a concise and excellent read. -- Larry D. Lankton IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology A short, well-written, lavishly illustrated, and elegant history... [Robert Casey] has met a great need and done it well. -- Tom McCarthy Michigan Historical ReviewTable of ContentsForeword, by William Clay Ford Jr. and Patricia E. MooradianAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Automobility in 19082. Creating the Model T3. Manufacturing the Model T4. Selling the Model T5. Owning & Driving the Model T6. The Meaning of the Model TNotesFurther ReadingIndex
£21.60
Johns Hopkins University Press Sage on the Screen
Book SynopsisAccessibly written and full of explanatory art, Sage on the Screen offers fresh insight into the current and future uses of instructional technology, from K-12 through non-institutionally-based learning.Trade ReviewThe book is easy to read, with great illustrations and personal stories. The changes in hardware and software are also well explained and made friendly for non-experts... Helpful for producing more nuanced and complex arguments about how media and technology have contributed to schooling and learning.—Inés Dussel, Center for Advanced Research and Studies, Mexico, History of EducationTable of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgments1. Traditional media2. Interactive media3. Hyper media4. Cloud media5. Immersive media6. Making sense of media for learning NotesIndex
£27.45
Johns Hopkins University Press The Draining of the Fens
Book SynopsisThis is compelling reading for British historians, environmental scholars, historians of technology, and anyone interested in state formation in early modern Europe.Trade ReviewStunningly relevant and beautifully written . . . This remarkable book is about nation building, economics, and environmental and social history. It is thoroughly researched, and historian Ash tells his story in a compelling way that is accessible to any reader. Essential. All levels/libraries.—ChoiceAsh's book is a sound study of the drainage of one part of the southern fens over a period of less than a century that was without doubt the most formative era in its taming. It is well-written, informative, assiduously referenced with copious endnotes, and an excellent testimony to the wealth of documentation that survives in the archives.—Environment and HistoryAn excellent contribution to the history of engineering projects, particularly from an environmental and political point of view.—MetascienceThis comprehensive account is likely to become the standard textbook for the history of the Fens. It is thoroughly researched, drawing on a wide range of printed material in addition to archival sources including court records, petitions, correspondence, and state papers.—Renaissance QuarterlyThe book is certainly the account for our generation.—American Historical ReviewAsh's work will long remain an essential account of these important events.—Journal of British StudiesAsh supplies a rousing narrative of 'improvement' schemes in the wetlands of eastern England, written in an engaging Whiggish style that imbues the early Stuart dynastic state.—Journal of Modern HistoryTable of ContentsDedication Table of Contents Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction. The Unrecovered Country: Draining the Land, Building the State Part I: Popular Politics, Crown Authority, and the Rise of the Projector Chapter 1: Land and Life in the Pre-Drainage Fens Chapter 2: State Building in the Fens, 1570-1607 Chapter 3: The Crisis of Local Governance, 1609-1616 Chapter 4: The Struggle to Forge Consensus, 1617-1621 Part II: Drainage Projects, Violent Resistance, and State Building Chapter 5: Draining the Hatfield Level, 1625-1636 Chapter 6: The First Great Level Drainage, 1630-1642 Chapter 7: Riot, Civil War, and Popular Politics in the Hatfield Level, 1640-1656 Chapter 8: The Second Great Level drainage, 1649-1656 Epilogue. The Once and Future Fens: Unintended Consequences in an Artificial Landscape Glossary Bibliography Index
£42.75
Johns Hopkins University Press Tiger Check
Book SynopsisThe book illuminates the complex interactions between human and machine that accompany advancing automation in the workplace.Trade ReviewUltimately, this work is one of the best works of air power (and technology) history that this reviewer has read in quite some time, and will likely become a standard of the field. It certainly sets a very high bar for other historians. For those interested in pilot culture and/or aircraft technology, this is required reading, while still pointing towards directions for future scholarship.—Ballons to DronesFino has truly written a very fine and well-researched academic book that will appeal across disciplines and military services. Tiger Check proves that aggressiveness and being a good stick, are still the hallmark of being of fighter pilot, but adds switchology and scientific skills needed to the traits necessary to operate a modern fighter aircraft. If the Sabre pilots were tigers, then today’s fighter pilots are tigers in lab coats. Fino should be mandatory reading for fighter pilots, especially those who are not familiar with the genesis of the tactics and tradecraft that they ply today. Though highly technical in some sections, it is an imminently readable tome that will also appeal to air power and technical aficionados, and those who seek to understand the origins and the changing nature of air-to-air combat.—The Strategy BridgeThis is a masterly analysis of fighter combat in the Korean and Vietnam wars and beyond...an outstanding book showing how pilots grappled with new technologies that promised to simplify their jobs while increasing their lethality in the air but, the author says, also threatened to rob them of the quintessential fighter pilot experience.—Aviation NewsTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsList of Acronyms and Abbreviations1. Introduction2. The Myth of the Fighter PilotCrafting the Mythical AceRevisiting the HistoryRitualizing the MythWar's Next TestConclusion3. Sabres over KoreaA New Solution to an Old Gunnery ProblemThrust into WarCapturing GloryUsing the New GunsightsConclusion4. Phantoms over VietnamA New Approach to the Gunnery ProblemThrust into War, AgainTension in the AirWho Gets the Credit?Conclusion5. Eagles over NellisA Pure Air-to-Air FighterTrial by Test"Sorting" Things OutConclusion6. ConclusionThe Irony of the Fighter PilotA Lesson for Future AutomationKnights or Scientists?NotesWorks CitedIndex
£57.80
Johns Hopkins University Press DeWitt Clinton and Amos Eaton
Book SynopsisIn so doing, he sheds light on a particularly innovative and fruitful period of interplay among science, politics, art, and literature in American history.Trade ReviewA significant contribution to our current understanding of the history of science between the first scientific revolution of the early modern period and the emergence of modern, professionalized science... Provocative and compelling. American Historical Review DeWitt Clinton and Amos Eaton provides the reader with a fresh exploration of the early American republic... Here is a volume chock full of good ideas and evocative questions. Endeavour A compelling story of the intersections between science and politics in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The Journal of American History What a good and interesting read this is, and that what is most novel and most striking are the numerous connections that others have perhaps seen-one here and one there-but that Spanagel has woven into a rich network that makes deep cultural sense. Isis DeWitt Clinton and Amos Eaton is an unfailingly interesting and informative book. It provides excellent insight into antebellum New York and neatly details how Clinton, Van Rensselaer, and Eaton had a profound impact on the intellectual and political life of New York... This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in antebellum US history or the history of science. It will appeal to a variety of academics and should be very useful in graduate seminars. British Society for Literature and ScienceTable of ContentsList of Figures and TablesPreambleIntroductionPart I1. Invitations to Study the Earth's Past2. Natural Sciences and Civic Virtues3. The Landlord and the Ex-convictPart II4. Clinton's Ditch5. Eaton's Agricultural and Geological Surveys6. Empire State ExportsPart III7. Literary Naturalists8. Kindred Spirits9. Rocks, Reverence, and ReligionConclusionNotesEssay on SourcesIndex
£20.25
Johns Hopkins University Press Instrumental Intimacy
Book SynopsisA critical examination of the rise of wearable EEG monitors. From Fitbits to GPS trackers, wearables promise to help us understand and improve ourselves in quantified ways. We count our steps, track our location, and even monitor our brain waves as we strive to achieve better fitness, clearer direction, or a more focused mind. But why do we rely on wearables to learn about ourselves? In Instrumental Intimacy, Melissa M. Littlefield questions our desire for mechanistic guidance by examining brain-based EEG wearables that promise to improve sleep, relationships, self-knowledge, and learning. Littlefield focuses specifically on EEGs' transition out of the laboratory and into the hands of consumers. While other brain-imaging technologies (such as MRI, PET, and MEG) are used only in specialized laboratories, human electroencephalography (a.k.a. EEG) is embedded in portable, user-friendly devices. These direct-to-consumer wearables visualize brain activity as accessible data, and many offeTable of ContentsList of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Public Displays of Arousal2. In the Zone3. ‘Sleeping seems to be such a natural thing’4. Neurogeography and the CityConclusionNotesReferencesIndex
£35.10
Johns Hopkins University Press Hydrocarbon Nation
Book SynopsisUnderstanding the complex history of US fossil fuel use can help us build a sustainable future. In Hydrocarbon Nation, Thor Hogan looks at how four technological revolutionsindustrial, agricultural, transportation, and electrificationdrew upon the enormous hydrocarbon wealth of the United States, transforming the young country into a nation with unparalleled economic and military potential. Each of these advances engendered new government policies aimed at strengthening national and economic security. The result was unprecedented energy security and the creation of a nation nearly impervious to outside threats. However, when this position weakened in the decades after the peaking of domestic conventional oil supplies in 1970, the American political and economic systems were severely debilitated. At the same time, climate change was becoming a major concern. Fossil fuels created the modern world, yet burning them created a climate crisis. Hogan argues that everyday Americans and policTrade Review"Hogan... writes passionately of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels to solve the looming climate crisis... By not implicitly demonizing hydrocarbons, Hydrocarbon Nation is much more persuasive... Bracing and opinionated, Hydrocarbon Nation is a worthwhile exploration backward and forward.—Ray Bert, Civil EngineeringHogan gives us plenty to think about. His work knitting together political cycles with energy revolutions (that span industry, agriculture, transportation, and electrification, or what he calls the innate revolutions) is thought provoking. It produces a creative narrative that ties energy history to banking policy, wealth and income inequality, international diplomacy, environmental health, and other topics over two centuries . . . Hydrocarbon Nation provides a useful reflection on how political developments from Hamiltonianism to Trumpism have something elemental to do with energy infrastructure.—Bob Johnson, National University, Journal of American HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPrologueIntroductionPart I1. Steam, National Security, and the First Political Age2. Coal, Macroeconomic Security, and the Second Political Age3. Oil, Microeconomic Security, and the Third Political AgePart II4. Energy Insecurity and the American Decline5. Gas and National Renewal in the Fourth Political Age6. Climate Security and a Sustainability RevolutionEpilogueNotesIndex
£46.35
Johns Hopkins University Press Engineering Victory
Book SynopsisSuperior engineering skills among Union soldiers helped ensure victory in the Civil War. Engineering Victory brings a fresh approach to the question of why the North prevailed in the Civil War. Historian Thomas F. Army, Jr., identifies strength in engineeringnot superior military strategy or industrial advantageas the critical determining factor in the war's outcome. Army finds that Union soldiers were able to apply scientific ingenuity and innovation to complex problems in a way that Confederate soldiers simply could not match. Skilled Free State engineers who were trained during the antebellum period benefited from basic educational reforms, the spread of informal educational practices, and a culture that encouraged learning and innovation. During the war, their rapid construction and repair of roads, railways, and bridges allowed Northern troops to pass quickly through the forbidding terrain of the South as retreating and maneuvering Confederates struggled to cut supply lines anTrade ReviewHighly recommended.—ChoiceA thoughtful treatise on an important subject related to war, culture, and society, Engineering Victory is highly recommended reading.—Civil War Books and AuthorsArmy's description of Union Army engineers and their accomplishments is certainly thorough and impressive. He relates numerous examples of how the effective use of engineers led to victory while an ineffective application led to defeat.—The Michigan Historical ReviewThomas Army Jr. has produced an interesting and thought-provoking study of military engineering in the Civil War with which students of the war, logistics, and technology will have to reckon.—Civil War Book Review. . . Army has made a major contribution to the understanding of how engineering and technology played a vital role in Union victory. Every scholar interested in the Civil War, the Union war effort, and the history of technology should grapple with his arguments and their implications.—The Journal of Southern History. . . Engineering Victory deserves praise . . .—Journal of the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War EraEngineering Victory will appeal to historians in the areas of technology, education, and military studies. Obviously, historians of science and technology will benefit the most from this book since it is primarily written for the purposes of highlighting engineering advancements and implementations by the Union Army during the Civil War . . . While Army does not deny that the Union had material and industrial advantages over the Confederacy, by examining the state of education in the North and the role Union engineers played in winning the war, he has opened a new avenue to explore in why the Civil War ended with a Union victory. Military historians would be wise to follow the trail that Army has started and continue this exploration of avenue of Civil War history.—Joshua Camper, University of Tennessee Martin, H-War Book ReviewsTable of ContentsList of MapsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart II The Education and Management Gap1. Common School Reform and Science Education2. Mechanics' Institutes and Agricultural Fairs3. Building the RailroadsPart II4. Wanted: Volunteer Engineers5. Early Successes and Failures6. McClellan Tests His Engineers7. The Birth of the United States Military Railroad8. Summer–Fall 1862Part III9. Vicksburg10. Gettysburg11. Chattanooga12. The Red River and Petersburg13. Atlanta and the Carolina CampaignsConclusionNotesEssay on SourcesIndex
£20.25
Johns Hopkins University Press Making Tobacco Bright
Book SynopsisHow did Bright Flue-Cured Tobacco come to dominate the industry?In her sweeping history of the American tobacco industry, Barbara Hahn traces the emergence of the tobacco plant's many varietal types, arguing that they are products not of nature but of economic relations and continued and intense market regulation. Hahn focuses her study on the most popular of these varieties, Bright Flue-Cured Tobacco. First grown in the inland Piedmont along the VirginiaNorth Carolina border, Bright Tobacco now grows all over the world, primarily because of its uniqueand easily replicatedcultivation and curing methods. Hahn traces the evolution of technologies in a variety of regulatory and cultural environments to reconstruct how Bright Tobacco became, and remains to this day, a leading commodity in the global tobacco industry. This study asks not what effect tobacco had on the world market, but how that market shaped tobacco into types that served specific purposes and became distinguishable from onTrade ReviewA discerning analysis of not only how a commodity—tobacco—was shaped and defined by technology, but also how technology can be influenced by a commodity . . . This interesting, thorough history will appeal to readers and researchers alike. Highly recommended.—ChoiceThoroughly researched, engaging, and enjoyable . . . An excellent first book.—Environmental HistoryStrongly argued and deeply researched.—Agricultural HistoryHahn has produced an important book, thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, that deserves a wide audience among American historians.—Journal of American HistoryHahn has written an ambitious book that examines how Americans created a commodity whose roots were densely—perhaps inextricably—tangled with those of the growing nation. Her work deserves a broad readership among students of southern agriculture, economic history, and the history of science and technology.—Journal of Southern HistoryAn impressive book, one that rewrites conventional understandings of tobacco as a crop, a commodity, and a symbol. From Jamestown to contemporary southern fields, Hahn tells an old story in an entirely fresh way.—Technology and CultureTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionProloguePart I1. Making Tobacco Virginian2. Growing the Business3. Death and TaxesPart II4. Ripeness Is All5. Inventing Tradition6. StabilizationAppendixNotesEssay on SourcesIndex
£17.58
Johns Hopkins University Press Cesarean Section
Book SynopsisWhy have cesarean sections become so commonplace in the United States?Between 1965 and 1987, the cesarean section rate in the United States rose precipitouslyfrom 4.5 percent to 25 percent of births. By 2009, one in three births was by cesarean, a far higher number than the 510% rate that the World Health Organization suggests is optimal. While physicians largely avoided cesareans through the mid-twentieth century, by the early twenty-first century, cesarean section was the most commonly performed surgery in the country. Although the procedure can be lifesaving, howand whydid it become so ubiquitous?Cesarean Section is the first book to chronicle this history. In exploring the creation of the complex social, cultural, economic, and medical factors leading to the surgery's increase, Jacqueline H. Wolf describes obstetricians' reliance on assorted medical technologies that weakened the skills they had traditionally employed to foster vaginal birth. She also reflects on an unsettling malpTrade ReviewAn outstanding and fascinating contribution to the history of medicine, women's history, and modern social history. Ambitious in its chronological scope, accessibly written, and convincingly argued, Cesarean Section offers new and original insight into the history of childbirth, as well as important broader matters, such as medical power, the technologization of hospitals, and the ethics of modern medical care.—Canadian Bulletin of Medical HistoryWolf draws from an impressive array of medical archives, medical literature, popular women's magazines, secondary source material, and her own oral history interviews. The outcome is a monograph that contemplates the complex factors behind the evolution of risk, technology, and birthing. Wolf deftly crafts a narrative that uses the stories of women's recollections of their birthing experience as well as those of physicians as a way to reinforce her historical analysis of medical sources and data . . . Cesarean Section will appeal to those interested in women's history and medical history as well as the relationship between culture, risk, and technology.—Bulletin of the History of MedicineCesarean Section is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of childbirth or surgery, but also those who want to read a focused case study on the evolution of medical technologies and practices in modern America. Wolf certainly makes a major contribution to the literature on reproductive health and childbirth, but her ambitious scope and methodologies—particularly the idea of risk and her use of oral histories—offer a lot to a more general audience. It would make a welcome addition to syllabi for medical and women's history classes, particularly at the graduate level.—Kelly S. O'Donnell, Thomas Jefferson University, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied SciencesWolf's Cesarean Section is a compelling study of the procedure in the history of medicine. Her skillfully balanced monograph makes extensive use of a number of primary sources . . . This book could easily be used in a history of science and medicine course due to its accessibility.—John A. Carranza, SynapsisTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Epitome of Risk2. Still Too Risky?3. Risk or Remedy?4. Assessing Risk5. Inflating Risk6. Operating in a Culture of Risk7. Giving Birth in a Culture of RiskNotesGlossaryWorks CitedIndex
£38.70
Johns Hopkins University Press Movable Markets
Book SynopsisThe untold story of America's wholesale food business. In nineteenth-century America, municipal deregulation of the butcher trade and state-incorporated market companies gave rise to a flourishing wholesale trade. In Movable Markets, Helen Tangires describes the evolution of the American wholesale marketplace for fresh food, from its development as a bustling produce district in the heart of the city to its current indiscernible place in food industrial parks on the urban periphery. Tangires follows the middlemen, those intermediaries who became functional necessities as the railroads accelerated the process of delivering perishable food to the city. Tracing their rise and decline in the wake of a deregulated food economy, she asks: How did these people, who occupied such key roles as food distributors and suppliers to the retail trade, end up exiled to urban outskirts? Moving into the early twentieth century, she explains how progressive city planners and agricultural economists rTrade ReviewTangires's careful attention to physical market spaces brings them to life for readers interested in architectural history or urban planning.—Business History ReviewHelen Tangires tells the story of a time, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when wholesale urban food markets mattered very much to the average consumer.—Journal of Social HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsList of AcronymsIntroductionPart I. Open Entry1. Shelter for the Middleman 2. The Produce District: Design by ImprovisationPart II. Consolidation3. Planning the Wholesale Terminal Market4. The Nation's Capital: Testing Ground for the Wholesale TradePart III. New Frontiers5. The New Deal: Birth of the State-Sponsored Regional Market6. Industrial Parks and the USDA ParadigmConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£51.50
Johns Hopkins University Press Sailing School
Book SynopsisHands-on science in the Age of Exploration. Winner of the John Lyman Book Award in Naval and Maritime Science and Technology by the North American Society for Oceanic History and the Leo Gershoy Prize by the American Historical AssociationThroughout the Age of Exploration, European maritime communities bent on colonial and commercial expansion embraced the complex mechanics of celestial navigation. They developed schools, textbooks, and instruments to teach the new mathematical techniques to sailors. As these experts debated the value of theory and practice, memory and mathematics, they created hybrid models that would have a lasting impact on applied science. In Sailing School, a richly illustrated comparative study of this transformative period, Margaret E. Schotte charts more than two hundred years of navigational history as she investigates how mariners solved the challenges of navigating beyond sight of land. She begins by outlining the influential sixteenth-century Iberian modeTrade ReviewAs voyages stretched into open ocean, mathematical expertise in celestial navigation became essential. Hands-on instruction with instruments remained key, but as historian Margaret Schotte reveals in this deft, scholarly chronicle, the nautical manual soon came into its own.—Barbara Kiser, NatureSailing School deploys compelling printed images and manuscript notations to reconstruct the practice of learning, a particularly difficult feat for a phenomenon that takes place in an intangible mental realm. In fusing the history of learning and print with that of navigation, Schotte shows how deep transformations in public intellectual culture built on themselves.—Sarah Kinkel, Times Higher EducationSchotte, in combination with Johns Hopkins University Press, has produced a beautifully illustrated, perceptively argued, well-written monograph that enhances historical understandings of not just early modern navigation, but also of early modern technical education and the lived experience of the pre-industrial maritime world. Sailing School exemplifies the kind of original work that close archival research can yield and will be a definitive work on its subject for years to come.—Timothy S. Wolters, Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies[A] valuable academic study. Sailing School is well-written with copious documentation.—James C. Hamilton, Captain Cook SocietySailing School provides us with a technically researched history of navigational pedagogy with enough captivating prose to transport the reader into the decisions and methods of educators in classrooms from past centuries . . . Schotte has produced an exceptional history of education for a snapshot of time within a highly technical field.—Darrell J. Glaser, United States Naval Academy, EH.NetSailing School is and extremely informative look into the practice and transmission of navigational knowledge in Europe during the scientific revolution, and how text helped to codify and communicate that information to new practitioners.—Kendra Lawrence, East Carolina University, Nautical Research JournalSchotte's book is an important contribution to maritime history and absolutely should be on the shelf of all interested in the details of seafaring life in the age of sail, as well as those studying Europe's centuries of expansion and conquest. I strongly recommend this book accordingly.—Ian Yeates, The Northern MarinerIt is immediately clear that Schotte knows how to draw readers into sweeping historic events, enriching the story with detail and accuracy to inspire awe . . . From technical advancements to highly charged personal stories, Schotte's book is a fascinating read.—Megan Mueller, yFile - York University's NewsIt is the immediacy of its subject matter that makes Sailing School so richly fascinating . . . Multinational in its approach, it offers insights into what was distinctive about pedagogy and practice in England, Spain, France and the Netherlands, and analysis of the extent to which knowledge and expertise were shared and transferred – not least through the medium of print. What one 17th-century teacher called 'This Art of Traversing and Caravanning over Neptune's Vast Dominions' has found in Schotte a gifted, lucid and illuminating chronicler.—Mathew Lyons, Literary ReviewThe history of getting from A to B is usually told as the history of instruments . . . But Margaret Schotte, in her excellent Sailing School, argues convincingly that the history of how ships, people, and goods move across vast distances must also be, perhaps quite centrally, a history of the book. Sailing School is a history of how early modern navigators learned to become navigators, and it holds important lessons for early modern knowledge as a whole.—William Rankin, Yale University, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science SocietySailing School, with its comparative analysis of academic traditions and training practices across Europe, is a magnificent contribution in the fields of History, History of Education, Pedagogy, Sociology, and Science in general. Margaret Schotte shows that "navigators were not born but made", enriching with new data and interpretations the history of knowledge in the Early Modern period. With a rigorous investigation and a brilliant narrative, she brings the European nautical science of the 16th and 17th centuries directly into the Scientific Revolution.—Silvana Munzi, RUTTER Book ReviewSchotte's book is a very important and highly relevant book for all interested in the technologies of the seas in the early modern period.—Hakon With Andersen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Technology and CultureTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsEditorial PracticesIntroductionPrologue. A Model Education—Seville, ca. 1552Chapter One. From the Water to the Writing Book—Amsterdam, ca.Chapter Two. "By the Shortest Path": Developing Mathematical Rules—Dieppe, 1675Chapter Three. Hands-On Theory along the Thames—London, 1683Chapter Four. Paper Sailors, Classroom Lessons—The Netherlands, ca. 1710Chapter Five. Lieutenant Riou Is Put to the Test—The Southern Indian Ocean, 1789Epilogue. Sailing by the Book, ca. 1800GlossaryNotesBibliographyIndex
£46.35
Johns Hopkins University Press Coal and Empire
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewEnlightening reading for anyone interested in the politics and economics of energy.—ChoiceExciting to read. It is the product of someone who is such a gifted writer.—New Books NetworkPeter Shulman’s excellent new book mines the pre-history of the relationship between ideas about energy extraction and the building of the United States as an imperial nation.—Explorations in Federal HistoryA major contribution to foreign policy history and an essential read for any scholar interested in the development of policy and technology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.—H-Net ReviewsIn his exhaustively researched book, Shulman convincingly argues for the centrality of coal to nineteenth-century American domestic and foreign policy. His fast paced and wide-ranging work recounts a number of fascinating episodes central to nineteenth-century American history through the lens of energy needs.—Diplomatic History[Shulman's] rich text provides a vital contribution to our understanding of how resource exploitation—and hence science and technological change—was woven into the history of economics, international affairs, and domestic politics.—Journal of American HistoryCoal and Empire offers an intellectual feast for both historians and modern energy scholars. Meticulously researched and expertly written, it attempts to show how an energy fuel, in this instance coal, became an integral part of United States national security in the nineteenth century.—Technology and CultureA forceful book—well-written, eye-opening, and analytically sharp. Coal and Empire is essential reading for anyone interested in the deep roots of the modern fossil economy.—American Historical ReviewRegardless of where you stand on the nineteenth-century US imperial question, the resources, technology, and politics behind expanding US interests have long needed the careful treatment Coal and Empire provides.—Historical GeographyThe book is an important one, and the histories of more quotidian commodities need more attention more generally. By using coal as a lens Shulman shows its integral place across US history and the development of its global role into the twentieth century.—Mariner's MirrorInnovative and important analyses of the specific role of engineers and technology in provoking changes in energy policies, and thus international relations . . . by delivering a detailed and accurate historical reconstruction of energy in nineteenth-century America, the book provides an interesting comparative case to present narratives about oil and energy security in the contemporary United States.—AMBIXFactpacked book of vital information.—M.G. ParegianCoal and Empire apporte ainsi une réflexion de long terme conduisant jusqu'aux rivages du temps présent. Ce n'est pas l'un des moindres attraits de ce livre stimulant.—Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales [English edition]While the book is an excellent stand-alone study of the American adoption of coal for naval, mercantile, and imperial gains, it also is a fascinating addition to the growing field of energy history. Readers searching for an in-depth examination of naval and government policy will find what they seek, but so too will those interested in broader American, environmental, and energy histories.—Canadian Journal of HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Empire and the Politics of Information2. Engineering Economy3. The Economy of Time and Space4. The Slavery Solution5. The Debate over Coaling Station6. Inventing LogisticsConclusionChronological Listing of Cited Congressional Publicationsfrom the United States Serial SetNotesBibliographic EssayIndex
£27.45
Johns Hopkins University Press Technology and the Environment in History
Book SynopsisNew perspectives on how envirotech can help us engage with the surrounding world in ways that are more sustainable for humanityand the planet. Today's scientists, policymakers, and citizens are all confronted by numerous dilemmas at the nexus of technology and the environment. Every day seems to bring new worries about the dangers posed by carcinogens, superbugs, energy crises, invasive species, genetically modified organisms, groundwater contamination, failing infrastructure, and other troubling issues. In Technology and the Environment in History, Sara B. Pritchard and Carl A. Zimring adopt an analytical approach to explore current research at the intersection of environmental history and the history of technologyan emerging field known as envirotech. Technology and the Environment in History They discuss the important topics, historical processes, and scholarly concerns that have emerged from recent work in thinking about envirotech. Each chapter focuses on a different urgent topiTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction. Technology and the Environment in History1. Food and Food Systems2. Industrialization3. Discards4. Disasters5. Body6. SensescapesConclusion. An Envirotechnical WorldAppendix. Teaching ResourcesNotesBibliographyIndex
£21.60
Johns Hopkins University Press Sovereign Skies
Book SynopsisA pathbreaking history of the regulatory foundations of America''s twentieth-century aerial preeminence.Today, the federal government possesses unparalleled authority over the atmosphere of the United States. Yet when the Wright Brothers inaugurated the air age on December 17, 1903, the sky was an unregulated frontier. As increasing numbers of aircraft threatened public safety in subsequent decades and World War I accentuated national security concerns about aviation, the need for government intervention became increasingly apparent. But where did authority over the airplane reside within America''s federalist system? And what should US policy look like for a device that could readily travel over physical barriers and political borders?In Sovereign Skies, Sean Seyer provides a radically new understanding of the origins of American aviation policy in the first decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on the concept of mental models from cognitive science,Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionChapter One. Where Does the Regulatory Power Lie? Transportation and Federalism before World War IChapter Two. World War I and the Internationalization of American Aviation PolicyChapter Three. Debating the Administrative Framework for Federal ControlChapter Four. The Struggle for LegislationChapter Five. The Need for Regulatory CompatibilityChapter Six. Shattered Expectations: An Air Convention for the Western HemisphereConclusionNotesIndex
£49.95
Johns Hopkins University Press Replayed
Book SynopsisA leading voice in technology studies shares a collection of essential essays on the preservation of software and history of games. Since the early 2000s, Henry Lowood has led or had a key role in numerous initiatives devoted to the preservation and documentation of virtual worlds, digital games, and interactive simulations, establishing himself as a major scholar in the field of game studies. His voluminous writings have tackled subject matter spanning the history of game design and development, military simulation, table-top games, machinima, e-sports, wargaming, and historical software archives and collection development. Replayed consolidates Lowood's far-flung and significant publications on these subjects into a single volume.
£37.35
Johns Hopkins University Press Making Machines of Animals
Book Synopsis
£45.00
Johns Hopkins University Press How Writing Made Us Human 3000 BCE to Now
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAn enjoyable and stimulating read . . . Stephens has produced a fascinating story of twists and turns.—The Conversation
£27.00
Johns Hopkins University Press Nothing But Nets
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: Making Evidence-Based Global Health in Africa1. The Scientific Object: Becoming the Right Tool for the Job2. The Biomedical Technology: From Kenyan Particulars to Global Universals3. The Technology of Neoliberal Policy: Taking Insecticide-Treated Nets to Market4. The Global Health Commodity: Selling the Value of Saving Lives5. The Domestic Technology: Making Healthy Homes in KenyaConclusion: Lessons for Global Health and Malaria Control in a Precarious AgeAcknowledgementsBibliographyIndexNotes
£37.35
O'Reilly Media Inventing a Better Mousetrap
Book SynopsisLearn about the role that patent models played in American history--and even learn to build your own replica!
£17.99
Cornell University Press Dismantlings
Book SynopsisFor the master''s tools, the poet Audre Lorde wrote, will never dismantle the master''s house. Dismantlings is a study of literary, political, and philosophical critiques of the utopian claims about technology in the Long Seventies, the decade and a half before 1980. Following Alice Hilton''s 1963 admonition that the coming years would bring humanity to a crossroadsmachines for HUMAN BEINGS or human beings for THE MACHINEMatt Tierney explores wide-ranging ideas from science fiction, avant-garde literatures, feminist and anti-racist activism, and indigenous eco-philosophy that may yet challenge machines of war, control, and oppression.Dismantlings opposes the language of technological idealism with radical thought of the Long Seventies, from Lorde and Hilton to Samuel R. Delany and Ursula K. Le Guin to Huey P. Newton, John Mohawk, and many others. This counter-lexicon retrieves seven terms for the contemporary critique of technology: Luddism, a verbal and Trade ReviewDismantlings is a remarkable book. It is also a difficult book. Difficult not because of impenetrable theoretical prose (the writing is clear and crisp), but because it is always challenging to go back and confront the warnings that were ignored... The lessons from the long seventies are those that we are still struggling to reckon with today, including the recognition that in order to fully make sense of the machines around us it may be necessary to dismantle many of them. * boundary 2 *Unable to do justice to this magnificent mongraph, it will have to suffice to say that Tierney's Dismantlings is one of the most important books of the year as it offers up a number of thinkers and artists that provide language and strategies for working through urgent issues impacting the globe today and for inspiring ways to use words against machines to act towards more equitable futures. -- Mary Foltz * The Year's Work in English Studies *Matt Tierney['s] excellent and impassioned new book, Dismantlings, reminds us that some of the most powerful critiques of technology throughout the period drew on rhetorics steeped in Luddite ideologies that were cannier than we think. * American Literary History *Table of ContentsIntroduction: For the Sake of Survival 1. Luddism 2. Communion 3. Cyberculture 4. Distortion 5. Revolutionary Suicide 6. Liberation Technology 7. Thanatopography Conclusion: American Carnage and Technologies of Tomorrow Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Permissions Index
£30.40
Cornell University Press The Truth Society
Book SynopsisNoelle Molé Liston''s The Truth Society seeks to understand how a period of Italian political spectacle, which regularly blurred fact and fiction, has shaped how people understand truth, mass-mediated information, scientific knowledge, and forms of governance. Liston scrutinizes Italy''s late twentieth-century political culture, particularly the impact of the former prime minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi. By doing so, she examines how this truth-bending political era made science, logic, and rationality into ideas that needed saving.With the prevalence of fake news and our seeming lack of shared reality in the post-truth world, many people struggle to figure out where this new normal came from. Liston argues that seemingly disparate events and practices that have unfolded in Italy are historical reactions to mediatized political forms and particular, cultivated ways of knowing. Politics, then, is always sutured to how knowledge is structured, circulated, and Trade ReviewThis notion of truth lies at the heart of Noelle Molé Liston's inquiry into recent developments in Italian politics and society. * Survival: Global politics and strategy *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Manifest Disguise and Mediatized Politics 2. The Soldiers of Rationality 3. The Rise of Algorithm Populism 4. The Trial against Disinformation 5. Scientific Anesthetization in the Anthropocene Conclusion: Mirrored Window World
£21.84
Cornell University Press A Simpler Life
Book SynopsisA Simpler Life approaches the developing field of synthetic biology by focusing on the experimental and institutional lives of practitioners in two labs at Princeton University. It highlights the distance between hyped technoscience and the more plodding and entrenched aspects of academic research. Talia Dan-Cohen follows practitioners as they wrestle with experiments, attempt to publish research findings, and navigate the ins and outs of academic careers. Dan-Cohen foregrounds the practices and rationalities of these pursuits that give both researchers'' lives and synthetic life their distinctive contemporary forms. Rather than draw attention to avowed methodology, A Simpler Life investigates some of the more subtle and tectonic practices that bring knowledge, doubt, and technological intervention into new configurations. In so doing, the book sheds light on the more general conditions of contemporary academic technoscience.Trade ReviewIn her ethnographic study, conducted over a three-year period, Dan-Cohen followed two laboratories with widely differing technical and epistemological approaches working in a complex multidisciplinary and high-profile field. Observations and interviews included here catch the day-to-day action as principal investigators, post-docs, and students navigate successes and failures in the laboratory, face the challenges of publishing, and deal with the complexities of institutional politics. These accounts are both informative and entertaining. * Choice *In her ethnography of two synthetic biology laboratories at Princeton University, Dan-Cohen writes that synthetic biology is "the latest permutation in a history of mutual incursions between nature and culture, and a contested, heterogeneous, and unstable one at that * American Anthroplogist *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Labs, Lives, Technoscience 2. The Virtues of the Naïve View 3. Looking for Patterns 4. To the Editor 5. On the Move Epilogue
£97.20
Cornell University Press Empire of the Air
Book SynopsisEmpire of the Air tells the story of three American visionariesLee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoffwhose imagination and dreams turned a hobbyist''s toy into radio, launching the modern communications age. Tom Lewis weaves the story of these men and their achievements into a richly detailed and moving narrative that spans the first half of the twentieth century, a time when the American romance with science and technology was at its peak. Empire of the Air is a tale of pioneers on the frontier of a new technology, of American entrepreneurial spirit, and of the tragic collision between inventor and corporation.Trade ReviewLewis's book, which relates the civil wars between the principal figures in the invention and development of radio, is an achievement in its own right: finely detailed, engagingly written, and unexpectedly dramatic. * Boston Globe *[Lewis] has all of the skills and instincts of a historian, a gift for clear description of complex technologies and a real passion for detail. * Los Angeles Times *A compelling tale that takes readers back to another era and shows us how our lives were transformed forever. * Washington Post *The lives of the two innovative technologists (Lee DeForest and Edwin Armstrong) and the entrepreneur (David Sarnoff) whose work led to the success of radio provide the basis for this well-researched and superbly written volume. * Publishers' Weekly *Empire of the Air is indispensable for anyone curious about the beginnings of broadcasting and there is more than enough personal drama and social and political history to make the book entertaining and informative for the general reader. * Globe & Mail *Alternating between the technical wizardry, personality quirks, and feuds of these men, and the story of the growth of the industry itself and its influence over American life and leisure, the book is fast-paced, fun reading and doubles as a useful teaching tool for teachers of American history and culture, science, and mass communication. * Library Journal *[A] compelling read for anyone with an interest in the history of radio and television. * RadioUser *Table of ContentsPrologue: A New Empire for a New Century 1. The Faith in the Future 2. The Will to Succeed 3. "What Wireless Is Yet to Be" 4. Sarnoff and Marconi: Inventing a Legend 5. Wireless Goes to War 6. Releasing the Art: The Creation of RCA 7. Snapshots from the First Age of Broadcasting 8. CourtFight 9. The Godlike Presence 10. Armstrong and the FM Revolution 11. The Wizard War 12. "Until I'm Dead or Broke" 13. Victories Great and Small Epilogue: The Empire in Decline
£17.99
Cornell University Press Uncertainty by Design
Book SynopsisIn Uncertainty by Design Limor Samimian-Darash presents cases of the use of scenario technology in the fields of security and emergency preparedness, energy, and health by analyzing scenario narratives and practices at the National Emergency Management Authority in Israel, the World Health Organization''s Regional Office for Europe, and the World Energy Council. Humankind has long struggled with the uncertainty of the future, with how to foresee the future, imagine alternatives, or prepare for and guard against undesirable eventualities. Scenarioor scenario planningemerged in recent decades to become a widespread means through which states, large corporations, and local organizations imagine and prepare for the future. The scenario technology cases examined in Uncertainty by Design provide a useful lens through which to view contemporary efforts to engage in an overall journey of discovering the future, along with the modality of goveTable of ContentsIntroduction: Uncertainty, Scenarios, and the Future 1. Chronicity: The Problematization of Scenario Thinking 2. Narrative-Building: Imagining Plausible Futures 3. Exercising: Practicing the Unexpected 4. Subjectivation: Embracing Uncertainty 5. Simulations: Possibilities and Responses 6. Scenarios, Temporality, and Uncertainty Conclusions and Critical Limitations Epilogue: Scenarios and the Dynamics between Science and Imagination
£97.20
Cornell University Press Uncertainty by Design
Book SynopsisIn Uncertainty by Design Limor Samimian-Darash presents cases of the use of scenario technology in the fields of security and emergency preparedness, energy, and health by analyzing scenario narratives and practices at the National Emergency Management Authority in Israel, the World Health Organization''s Regional Office for Europe, and the World Energy Council. Humankind has long struggled with the uncertainty of the future, with how to foresee the future, imagine alternatives, or prepare for and guard against undesirable eventualities. Scenarioor scenario planningemerged in recent decades to become a widespread means through which states, large corporations, and local organizations imagine and prepare for the future. The scenario technology cases examined in Uncertainty by Design provide a useful lens through which to view contemporary efforts to engage in an overall journey of discovering the future, along with the modality of goveTable of ContentsIntroduction: Uncertainty, Scenarios, and the Future 1. Chronicity: The Problematization of Scenario Thinking 2. Narrative-Building: Imagining Plausible Futures 3. Exercising: Practicing the Unexpected 4. Subjectivation: Embracing Uncertainty 5. Simulations: Possibilities and Responses 6. Scenarios, Temporality, and Uncertainty Conclusions and Critical Limitations Epilogue: Scenarios and the Dynamics between Science and Imagination
£21.59
Stanford University Press The Evolution of the Chinese Internet: Creative
Book SynopsisDespite widespread consensus that China's digital revolution was sure to bring about massive democratic reforms, such changes have not come to pass. While scholars and policy makers alternate between predicting change and disparaging a stubbornly authoritarian regime, in this book Shaohua Guo demonstrates how this dichotomy misses the far more complex reality. The Evolution of the Chinese Internet traces the emergence and maturation of one of the most creative digital cultures in the world through four major technological platforms: the bulletin board system, the blog, the microblog, and WeChat. Guo transcends typical binaries of freedom and control, to argue that Chinese Internet culture displays a uniquely sophisticated interplay between multiple extremes, and that its vibrancy is dependent on these complex negotiations. In contrast to the flourishing of research findings on what is made invisible online, this book examines the driving mechanisms that grant visibility to particular kinds of user-generated content. Offering a systematic account of how and why an ingenious Internet culture has been able to thrive, Guo highlights the pivotal roles that media institutions, technological platforms, and creative practices of Chinese netizens have played in shaping culture on- and offline.Trade Review"Guo brings much-needed historical and literary sensitivities to the study of complex technological forms. Her innovative approach sheds critical new light on the history, culture, and politics of the Chinese internet. Highly recommended!" -- Guobin Yang * University of Pennsylvania *"Built on over a decade of scrupulous field research and perspicacious on-site observations, this book puts itself on the must-read list of intellectual endeavors inquiring into the way of being on China's ever-evolving internet. Subtly contextualized and dexterously historicized, the narratives embed rich concepts in the flesh and blood of everyday life, virtual and real." -- Zixue Tai * University of Kentucky *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1A Cultural Revolution in China's Digital Age chapter abstractBeginning with a discussion of major paradoxes on entertainment, control, and innovation surrounding the Chinese Internet, chapter 1 introduces the puzzle that the rest of the book addresses: how and why has a seemingly repressive authoritarian regime been able to catalyze an ingenious Internet culture in China. It proposes "the network of visibility" as an analytical lens to delve into the mechanisms behind the vibrancy of online culture in China. The network of visibility is analyzed through the process of competition for (1) user attention, and (2) content authority among Internet corporations, media outlets, and individual players in the cultural realm. Consequently, the vitality of the Chinese digital culture is rooted in this dynamic process of negotiation, collaboration, and contestation enacted by the interplay of diverse agents, including the state, cultural institutions, commercial corporations, and Internet users. 2A Historical Overview through Technological Platforms chapter abstractChapter 2 delineates the developmental history of the Internet in China through the four predominant platforms: bulletin board system (BBS), the blog, the microblog, and WeChat. Proceeding chronologically, this chapter addresses how the defining features of these platforms and competition among major players in the field have contributed to shaping public culture and publicity strategies emerging in the technology-mediated sphere. Special attention is paid to the role that the Chinese government and commercial portals play in building research and education networks, creating business models, and continuously expanding into new markets. 3Tracking Playfulness chapter abstractChapter 3 investigates the playfulness of the Chinese Internet and its symbiotic relationship with a culture of contention. Much has been written about the ingenuity of Chinese netizens in appropriating humor, parody, and satire to mock authorities, seek entertainment, and organize networked resistance. However, little scholarly work has addressed how playfulness came to dominate the Chinese Internet in the first place. Taking Internet celebrities as case studies, this chapter attributes the predominant fun-seeking mode to the rudimentary formation of elitist netizen communities in the late 1990s. It addresses the ways in which BBS, as an affective content platform, cultivated the symbiotic relationship between frivolity and serious political engagement among early Internet adopters. This collective spirit of fun-seeking also paved the way for the Internet industry's continuous experiments with comedic mechanisms in the years to come. 4National Blogging and Cultural Entrepreneurship chapter abstractChapter 4 focuses on the intersection of the entertainment industry, entrepreneurial culture, and the golden age of blogging in China. It probes the rise of cultural entrepreneurs, who quickly aligned themselves with enterprises seeking to develop culture-related business and transformed the ways that cultural works are produced and publicized. The chapter examines four phenomenally successful, yet understudied cases: television host and producer Yang Lan; star-cum-director Xu Jinglei; publisher Hong Huang; and writer, publisher, and director Guo Jingming. These celebrities, as "attention-haves," due in large part to their fame already established through other channels, innovatively capitalized on digital media to explore new modes of cultural production and to build personal brands. Their trailblazing activities illuminate the ways in which China's nascent entertainment industry, with the backing of Internet corporations, has reinvigorated writing practices, cultivated middle-class aspirations, and aligned with entrepreneurial initiatives in the age of neoliberalism. 5Taboo Breakers and Microcultural Contention chapter abstractTaking the blogs of Mu Zimei and Han Han as case studies, this chapter investigates how an entertainment-oriented blogosphere has catalyzed the rise of opinion leaders who tactically disrupt preset parameters of social, moral, and political norms. It argues that style—defined as a conglomeration of diverse elements, including language, subject matter, online sociality, and the structure and layout of webpages—is essential to these taboo breakers' strategies of contention. In turn, the divergent responses these bloggers evoke fulfill the dual function of enlightenment and entertainment, and catalyze the forging of politically minded citizens at a micro level. 6Digital Witnessing on Weibo chapter abstractThis chapter spells out the multifarious function of the microblogging platform in China. Delving into representative Weibo-based incidents from 2009 to 2018, it examines the role that digital witnessing plays in promoting citizen activism and shaping public culture on Chinese microblogosphere. These cases exemplify the evolving transition of digital witnessing on Weibo, from an emphasis on responsibilities of spectators to multifarious forms of collective spectating mobilized by a diverse range of social actors. Taken together, digital witnessing on Weibo demonstrates how the technological features, business operations, the state, and Internet users have jointly shaped the sociocultural meanings of this platform. 7WeChat: An Inflorescence of Content Production chapter abstractThis chapter analyzes how WeChat public accounts have revolutionized the ways in which original content is distributed and commodified. It examines the rise and fall of Mi Meng, owner of one of the most popular public accounts up until February 2019, when she closed her account due to public pressure. Mi Meng's writings not only struck a chord with economically disadvantaged groups but also resonated with the anxiety of a middle-class audience who felt their status becoming increasingly precarious. More important, the management of Mi Meng's account exemplified a changing mode of writing from an author-centered model to a model of team production that involved fan labor, personal branding, and a focus on networking capacity. At the same time, the sudden downfall of Mi Meng illustrates the same kind of unpredictability and precariousness that contributed to her sensational rise in the first place. 8Ambivalent Revolution chapter abstractChapter 8 discusses the implications of this book's findings and pinpoints areas for future research. Essentially, this book investigates digital cultural formation through the four most dynamic discursive spaces to emerge over the past two decades in China (1994–2019): the bulletin board system (BBS), the blog, the microblog (Weibo), and WeChat (Weixin). The creation of these digital platforms not only showcases the local appropriation of global technologies in China but also exemplifies how Internet users' mundane activities online hold significant potential for forging politically minded citizens at a micro level. By delineating the process by which user-generated content has been produced, promoted, and received, this book historicizes the study of digital media and sheds light on understanding emerging platforms.
£92.80
Stanford University Press The Evolution of the Chinese Internet: Creative
Book SynopsisDespite widespread consensus that China's digital revolution was sure to bring about massive democratic reforms, such changes have not come to pass. While scholars and policy makers alternate between predicting change and disparaging a stubbornly authoritarian regime, in this book Shaohua Guo demonstrates how this dichotomy misses the far more complex reality. The Evolution of the Chinese Internet traces the emergence and maturation of one of the most creative digital cultures in the world through four major technological platforms: the bulletin board system, the blog, the microblog, and WeChat. Guo transcends typical binaries of freedom and control, to argue that Chinese Internet culture displays a uniquely sophisticated interplay between multiple extremes, and that its vibrancy is dependent on these complex negotiations. In contrast to the flourishing of research findings on what is made invisible online, this book examines the driving mechanisms that grant visibility to particular kinds of user-generated content. Offering a systematic account of how and why an ingenious Internet culture has been able to thrive, Guo highlights the pivotal roles that media institutions, technological platforms, and creative practices of Chinese netizens have played in shaping culture on- and offline.Trade Review"Guo brings much-needed historical and literary sensitivities to the study of complex technological forms. Her innovative approach sheds critical new light on the history, culture, and politics of the Chinese internet. Highly recommended!" -- Guobin Yang * University of Pennsylvania *"Built on over a decade of scrupulous field research and perspicacious on-site observations, this book puts itself on the must-read list of intellectual endeavors inquiring into the way of being on China's ever-evolving internet. Subtly contextualized and dexterously historicized, the narratives embed rich concepts in the flesh and blood of everyday life, virtual and real." -- Zixue Tai * University of Kentucky *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1A Cultural Revolution in China's Digital Age chapter abstractBeginning with a discussion of major paradoxes on entertainment, control, and innovation surrounding the Chinese Internet, chapter 1 introduces the puzzle that the rest of the book addresses: how and why has a seemingly repressive authoritarian regime been able to catalyze an ingenious Internet culture in China. It proposes "the network of visibility" as an analytical lens to delve into the mechanisms behind the vibrancy of online culture in China. The network of visibility is analyzed through the process of competition for (1) user attention, and (2) content authority among Internet corporations, media outlets, and individual players in the cultural realm. Consequently, the vitality of the Chinese digital culture is rooted in this dynamic process of negotiation, collaboration, and contestation enacted by the interplay of diverse agents, including the state, cultural institutions, commercial corporations, and Internet users. 2A Historical Overview through Technological Platforms chapter abstractChapter 2 delineates the developmental history of the Internet in China through the four predominant platforms: bulletin board system (BBS), the blog, the microblog, and WeChat. Proceeding chronologically, this chapter addresses how the defining features of these platforms and competition among major players in the field have contributed to shaping public culture and publicity strategies emerging in the technology-mediated sphere. Special attention is paid to the role that the Chinese government and commercial portals play in building research and education networks, creating business models, and continuously expanding into new markets. 3Tracking Playfulness chapter abstractChapter 3 investigates the playfulness of the Chinese Internet and its symbiotic relationship with a culture of contention. Much has been written about the ingenuity of Chinese netizens in appropriating humor, parody, and satire to mock authorities, seek entertainment, and organize networked resistance. However, little scholarly work has addressed how playfulness came to dominate the Chinese Internet in the first place. Taking Internet celebrities as case studies, this chapter attributes the predominant fun-seeking mode to the rudimentary formation of elitist netizen communities in the late 1990s. It addresses the ways in which BBS, as an affective content platform, cultivated the symbiotic relationship between frivolity and serious political engagement among early Internet adopters. This collective spirit of fun-seeking also paved the way for the Internet industry's continuous experiments with comedic mechanisms in the years to come. 4National Blogging and Cultural Entrepreneurship chapter abstractChapter 4 focuses on the intersection of the entertainment industry, entrepreneurial culture, and the golden age of blogging in China. It probes the rise of cultural entrepreneurs, who quickly aligned themselves with enterprises seeking to develop culture-related business and transformed the ways that cultural works are produced and publicized. The chapter examines four phenomenally successful, yet understudied cases: television host and producer Yang Lan; star-cum-director Xu Jinglei; publisher Hong Huang; and writer, publisher, and director Guo Jingming. These celebrities, as "attention-haves," due in large part to their fame already established through other channels, innovatively capitalized on digital media to explore new modes of cultural production and to build personal brands. Their trailblazing activities illuminate the ways in which China's nascent entertainment industry, with the backing of Internet corporations, has reinvigorated writing practices, cultivated middle-class aspirations, and aligned with entrepreneurial initiatives in the age of neoliberalism. 5Taboo Breakers and Microcultural Contention chapter abstractTaking the blogs of Mu Zimei and Han Han as case studies, this chapter investigates how an entertainment-oriented blogosphere has catalyzed the rise of opinion leaders who tactically disrupt preset parameters of social, moral, and political norms. It argues that style—defined as a conglomeration of diverse elements, including language, subject matter, online sociality, and the structure and layout of webpages—is essential to these taboo breakers' strategies of contention. In turn, the divergent responses these bloggers evoke fulfill the dual function of enlightenment and entertainment, and catalyze the forging of politically minded citizens at a micro level. 6Digital Witnessing on Weibo chapter abstractThis chapter spells out the multifarious function of the microblogging platform in China. Delving into representative Weibo-based incidents from 2009 to 2018, it examines the role that digital witnessing plays in promoting citizen activism and shaping public culture on Chinese microblogosphere. These cases exemplify the evolving transition of digital witnessing on Weibo, from an emphasis on responsibilities of spectators to multifarious forms of collective spectating mobilized by a diverse range of social actors. Taken together, digital witnessing on Weibo demonstrates how the technological features, business operations, the state, and Internet users have jointly shaped the sociocultural meanings of this platform. 7WeChat: An Inflorescence of Content Production chapter abstractThis chapter analyzes how WeChat public accounts have revolutionized the ways in which original content is distributed and commodified. It examines the rise and fall of Mi Meng, owner of one of the most popular public accounts up until February 2019, when she closed her account due to public pressure. Mi Meng's writings not only struck a chord with economically disadvantaged groups but also resonated with the anxiety of a middle-class audience who felt their status becoming increasingly precarious. More important, the management of Mi Meng's account exemplified a changing mode of writing from an author-centered model to a model of team production that involved fan labor, personal branding, and a focus on networking capacity. At the same time, the sudden downfall of Mi Meng illustrates the same kind of unpredictability and precariousness that contributed to her sensational rise in the first place. 8Ambivalent Revolution chapter abstractChapter 8 discusses the implications of this book's findings and pinpoints areas for future research. Essentially, this book investigates digital cultural formation through the four most dynamic discursive spaces to emerge over the past two decades in China (1994–2019): the bulletin board system (BBS), the blog, the microblog (Weibo), and WeChat (Weixin). The creation of these digital platforms not only showcases the local appropriation of global technologies in China but also exemplifies how Internet users' mundane activities online hold significant potential for forging politically minded citizens at a micro level. By delineating the process by which user-generated content has been produced, promoted, and received, this book historicizes the study of digital media and sheds light on understanding emerging platforms.
£23.79
University of Minnesota Press Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed
Book SynopsisA complete history and theory of internet daemons brings these little-known—but very consequential—programs into the spotlight We’re used to talking about how tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon rule the internet, but what about daemons? Ubiquitous programs that have colonized the Net’s infrastructure—as well as the devices we use to access it—daemons are little known. Fenwick McKelvey weaves together history, theory, and policy to give a full account of where daemons come from and how they influence our lives—including their role in hot-button issues like network neutrality.Going back to Victorian times and the popular thought experiment Maxwell’s Demon, McKelvey charts how daemons evolved from concept to reality, eventually blossoming into the pandaemonium of code-based creatures that today orchestrates our internet. Digging into real-life examples like sluggish connection speeds, Comcast’s efforts to control peer-to-peer networking, and Pirate Bay’s attempts to elude daemonic control (and skirt copyright), McKelvey shows how daemons have been central to the internet, greatly influencing everyday users.Internet Daemons asks important questions about how much control is being handed over to these automated, autonomous programs, and the consequences for transparency and oversight.Trade Review"Beneath social media, beneath search, Internet Daemons reveals another layer of algorithms: deeper, burrowed into information networks. Fenwick McKelvey is the best kind of intellectual spelunker, taking us deep into the infrastructure and shining his light on these obscure but vital mechanisms. What he has delivered is a precise and provocative rethinking of how to conceive of power in and among networks."—Tarleton Gillespie, author of Custodians of the Internet"Internet Daemons is an original and important contribution to the field of digital media studies. Fenwick McKelvey extensively maps and analyzes how daemons influence data exchanges across Internet infrastructures. This study insightfully demonstrates how daemons are transformative entities that enable particular ways of transferring information and connecting up communication, with significant social and political consequences."—Jennifer Gabrys, author of Program EarthTable of ContentsAbbreviations and Technical TermsIntroduction1. The Devil We Know: Maxwell’s Demon, Cyborg Sciences, and Flow Control2. Possessing Infrastructure: Nonsynchronous Communication, IMPs, and Optimization3. IMPs, OLIVERs, and Gateways: Internetworking before the Internet4. Pandaemonium: The Internet as Daemons5. Suffering from Buffering? Affects of Flow Control6. The Disoptimized: The Ambiguous Tactics of the Pirate Bay7. A Crescendo of Online Interactive Debugging? Gamers, Publics and DaemonsConclusionAcknowledgmentsAppendix: Internet Measurement and MediatorsNotesBibliographyIndex
£80.00
University of Minnesota Press Internet Daemons: Digital Communications
Book SynopsisA complete history and theory of internet daemons brings these little-known—but very consequential—programs into the spotlight We’re used to talking about how tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon rule the internet, but what about daemons? Ubiquitous programs that have colonized the Net’s infrastructure—as well as the devices we use to access it—daemons are little known. Fenwick McKelvey weaves together history, theory, and policy to give a full account of where daemons come from and how they influence our lives—including their role in hot-button issues like network neutrality.Going back to Victorian times and the popular thought experiment Maxwell’s Demon, McKelvey charts how daemons evolved from concept to reality, eventually blossoming into the pandaemonium of code-based creatures that today orchestrates our internet. Digging into real-life examples like sluggish connection speeds, Comcast’s efforts to control peer-to-peer networking, and Pirate Bay’s attempts to elude daemonic control (and skirt copyright), McKelvey shows how daemons have been central to the internet, greatly influencing everyday users.Internet Daemons asks important questions about how much control is being handed over to these automated, autonomous programs, and the consequences for transparency and oversight.Trade Review"Beneath social media, beneath search, Internet Daemons reveals another layer of algorithms: deeper, burrowed into information networks. Fenwick McKelvey is the best kind of intellectual spelunker, taking us deep into the infrastructure and shining his light on these obscure but vital mechanisms. What he has delivered is a precise and provocative rethinking of how to conceive of power in and among networks."—Tarleton Gillespie, author of Custodians of the Internet"Internet Daemons is an original and important contribution to the field of digital media studies. Fenwick McKelvey extensively maps and analyzes how daemons influence data exchanges across Internet infrastructures. This study insightfully demonstrates how daemons are transformative entities that enable particular ways of transferring information and connecting up communication, with significant social and political consequences."—Jennifer Gabrys, author of Program EarthTable of ContentsAbbreviations and Technical TermsIntroduction1. The Devil We Know: Maxwell’s Demon, Cyborg Sciences, and Flow Control2. Possessing Infrastructure: Nonsynchronous Communication, IMPs, and Optimization3. IMPs, OLIVERs, and Gateways: Internetworking before the Internet4. Pandaemonium: The Internet as Daemons5. Suffering from Buffering? Affects of Flow Control6. The Disoptimized: The Ambiguous Tactics of the Pirate Bay7. A Crescendo of Online Interactive Debugging? Gamers, Publics and DaemonsConclusionAcknowledgmentsAppendix: Internet Measurement and MediatorsNotesBibliographyIndex
£21.59
University of Minnesota Press Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising
Book SynopsisA deep dive into the political roots of advertising on the internet The contemporary internet’s de facto business model is one of surveillance. Browser cookies follow us around the web, Amazon targets us with eerily prescient ads, Facebook and Google read our messages and analyze our patterns, and apps record our every move. In Profit over Privacy, Matthew Crain gives internet surveillance a much-needed origin story by chronicling the development of its most important historical catalyst: web advertising.The first institutional and political history of internet advertising, Profit over Privacy uses the 1990s as its backdrop to show how the massive data-collection infrastructure that undergirds the internet today is the result of twenty-five years of technical and political economic engineering. Crain considers the social causes and consequences of the internet’s rapid embrace of consumer monitoring, detailing how advertisers and marketers adapted to the existential threat of the internet and marshaled venture capital to develop the now-ubiquitous business model called “surveillance advertising.” He draws on a range of primary resources from government, industry, and the press and highlights the political roots of internet advertising to underscore the necessity of political solutions to reign in unaccountable commercial surveillance.The dominant business model on the internet, surveillance advertising is the result of political choices—not the inevitable march of technology. Unlike many other countries, the United States has no internet privacy law. A fascinating prehistory of internet advertising giants like Google and Facebook, Profit over Privacy argues that the internet did not have to turn out this way and that it can be remade into something better.Trade Review"A surveillance-oriented internet was not inevitable. As Matthew Crain brilliantly documents, the data-obsessed web was manifested to appease and uphold the advertising beast. By untangling the historic strings of policy, politics, and financial interests, Profit over Privacy invites the reader to question why we've come to accept the panoptic internet we know today."—danah boyd, author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens"In this exceptionally insightful and important book, Matthew Crain presents a definitive history of the evisceration of internet privacy. Rooted in a deep understanding of the history of advertising markets and the political economy of finance, Profit over Privacy focuses readers' attention on the fundamental forces demanding ever more data about our lives. Although it tells a dark story, its accessible and lively prose makes it a pleasure to read—and provides the historical knowledge necessary to help future regulators avoid the many mistakes of the past."—Frank Pasquale, author of New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI "The book provides a fascinating look at the way that commercial and private interests and the companies and lobbyists representing them wonout over other interests, such as public ownership and public interests,in anumber of debates and processes largely in the United States that created the global internet infrastructure we have now... Anyone interested in online and digital spaces, surveillance practices, the history of internet companies,and discussions of public policy in the internet age should want to read Profit Over Privacy."—Surveillance & Society"Revealing the emergence of a market logic that has placed individual surveillance at its core, this is a forceful and engaging book."—LSE Review of Books"His writing skills, including his ability to make the sociopolitical complexities of political economy accessible and engaging for a broad audience, from undergraduates to business executives, are most impressive."—International Journal of Communication"Brilliantly researched and thoroughly documented, the book argues that surveillance capitalism could not have existed outside of politics."—Technical Communication"In documenting the historical development of surveillance advertising, Crain makes a forceful argument against the status quo in favor of strong privacy laws."—College & Research LibrariesTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction1. The Revolution Will Be Commercialized2. A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce3. The Web Gets a Memory4. The Dotcom Bubble5. Surveillance Advertising Takes Shape6. The Privacy Challenge7. The Legacy of the Dotcom EraAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex
£72.00
University of Minnesota Press Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising
Book SynopsisA deep dive into the political roots of advertising on the internet The contemporary internet’s de facto business model is one of surveillance. Browser cookies follow us around the web, Amazon targets us with eerily prescient ads, Facebook and Google read our messages and analyze our patterns, and apps record our every move. In Profit over Privacy, Matthew Crain gives internet surveillance a much-needed origin story by chronicling the development of its most important historical catalyst: web advertising.The first institutional and political history of internet advertising, Profit over Privacy uses the 1990s as its backdrop to show how the massive data-collection infrastructure that undergirds the internet today is the result of twenty-five years of technical and political economic engineering. Crain considers the social causes and consequences of the internet’s rapid embrace of consumer monitoring, detailing how advertisers and marketers adapted to the existential threat of the internet and marshaled venture capital to develop the now-ubiquitous business model called “surveillance advertising.” He draws on a range of primary resources from government, industry, and the press and highlights the political roots of internet advertising to underscore the necessity of political solutions to reign in unaccountable commercial surveillance.The dominant business model on the internet, surveillance advertising is the result of political choices—not the inevitable march of technology. Unlike many other countries, the United States has no internet privacy law. A fascinating prehistory of internet advertising giants like Google and Facebook, Profit over Privacy argues that the internet did not have to turn out this way and that it can be remade into something better.Trade Review"A surveillance-oriented internet was not inevitable. As Matthew Crain brilliantly documents, the data-obsessed web was manifested to appease and uphold the advertising beast. By untangling the historic strings of policy, politics, and financial interests, Profit over Privacy invites the reader to question why we've come to accept the panoptic internet we know today."—danah boyd, author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens"In this exceptionally insightful and important book, Matthew Crain presents a definitive history of the evisceration of internet privacy. Rooted in a deep understanding of the history of advertising markets and the political economy of finance, Profit over Privacy focuses readers' attention on the fundamental forces demanding ever more data about our lives. Although it tells a dark story, its accessible and lively prose makes it a pleasure to read—and provides the historical knowledge necessary to help future regulators avoid the many mistakes of the past."—Frank Pasquale, author of New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI "The book provides a fascinating look at the way that commercial and private interests and the companies and lobbyists representing them wonout over other interests, such as public ownership and public interests,in anumber of debates and processes largely in the United States that created the global internet infrastructure we have now... Anyone interested in online and digital spaces, surveillance practices, the history of internet companies,and discussions of public policy in the internet age should want to read Profit Over Privacy."—Surveillance & Society"Revealing the emergence of a market logic that has placed individual surveillance at its core, this is a forceful and engaging book."—LSE Review of Books"His writing skills, including his ability to make the sociopolitical complexities of political economy accessible and engaging for a broad audience, from undergraduates to business executives, are most impressive."—International Journal of Communication"Brilliantly researched and thoroughly documented, the book argues that surveillance capitalism could not have existed outside of politics."—Technical Communication"In documenting the historical development of surveillance advertising, Crain makes a forceful argument against the status quo in favor of strong privacy laws."—College & Research LibrariesTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction1. The Revolution Will Be Commercialized2. A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce3. The Web Gets a Memory4. The Dotcom Bubble5. Surveillance Advertising Takes Shape6. The Privacy Challenge7. The Legacy of the Dotcom EraAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press The Switch: An Off and On History of Digital
Book SynopsisFrom the telegraph to the touchscreen, how the development of binary switching transformed everyday life and changed the shape of human agency The Switch traces the sudden rise of a technology that has transformed everyday life for billions of people: the binary switch. By chronicling the rapid growth of binary switching since the mid-nineteenth century, Jason Puskar contends that there is no human activity as common today as pushing a button or flipping a switch—the deceptively simple act of turning something on or off. More than a technical history, The Switch offers a cultural and political analysis of how reducing so much human action to binary alternatives has profoundly reshaped modern society. Analyzing this history, Puskar charts the rapid shift from analog to digital across a range of devices—keyboards, cameras, guns, light switches, computers, game controls, even the “nuclear button”—to understand how nineteenth-century techniques continue to influence today’s pervasive digital technologies. In contexts that include musical performance, finger counting, machine writing, voting methods, and immersive play, Puskar shows how the switch to switching led to radically new forms of action and thought. The innovative analysis in The Switch makes clear that binary inputs have altered human agency by making choice instantaneous, effort minimal, and effects more far-reaching than ever. In the process, it concludes, switching also fosters forms of individualism that, though empowering for many, also preserve a legacy of inequality and even domination. Trade Review "In this deeply ambitious and sophisticated book, Jason Puskar invites us to think more seriously about what happens almost every time we touch one of our devices and turn it on or swipe or click. From the technologies at our fingertips to the vastly larger networks of politics and language that they operate and represent, The Switch provides a fascinating cultural history of how we have made the modern world, and been remade in turn, by the simplest of human actions and the connections they enable."—Mark Goble, author of Beautiful Circuits: Modernism and the Mediated Life "A dazzling, beautifully written history of a pervasive but seemingly unremarkable technology of modern life: the binary switch. Jason Puskar’s delightful and important book will fascinate historians of media and technology; it should be required reading for anyone curious about how fantasies of liberal agency are cultivated in the buttons, keyboards, triggers, and toys that make us human."—Justus Nieland, author of Happiness by Design: Modernism and Media in the Eames Era Table of Contents Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Awake at the Switch Part I. Start 1. Origin Stories 2. Designing the Button 3. Analogs and Analogies Part II. Digital Bodies 4. The Point of Touch 5. Counting on the Body 6. Darth Vader’s Nipples Part III. Keyboard Rationality 7. The Keyboard’s Checkered Past 8. Human Types 9. Chording and Coding 10. The Archaeology of Qwerty Part IV. Objects of Play 11. The Toys of Dionysus 12. Pinball Wizards Part V. Haptic Liberalism 13. The Control Panel of Democracy 14. Switching Philosophies 15. Pistolgraphs 16. First-Person Shooters Epilogue: Self-Destruct Notes Index
£100.00
Bristol University Press Mundania: How and Where Technologies Are Made
Book SynopsisDigital services, platforms and arrangements are often promoted as smooth and convenient, smart or intelligent. When introduced, devices can appear utterly fascinating or awkward, even disquieting. Eventually, however, they soon disappear in the muddle of everyday life. This is how Mundania takes form. Based on original research, this book uses the concept of mundania to better understand technological change. Scholar-artist Robert Willim deftly unpacks the interplay between everyday life and the immense complexity of technological infrastructures. Offering imaginative new insights into our relationship with technology, this book will appeal to readers in a range of fields from science and technology studies and media studies to the arts.Table of Contents1. Arrival 2. Vanishing Points 3. In-between 4. Beyond 5. Beneath 6. Opacity 7. Order Variability Openings
£77.39
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a
Book SynopsisThe book presents a new conceptual framework and a set of research principles with which to study and interpret technology from a phenomenological perspective.Trade Review"Technology and Social Agency is the most provocative and significant book on the relationship between the material world and the human condition to appear in anthropology since Leslie A. White's The Evolution of Culture (1959). Unlike its polemic predecessor, however, Technology and Social Agency avoids instrumental determinism and establishes the challenging alternative of technology as a total social fact centered around individual human beings in meaningful communities of cultural practice. In reaffirming the human and social dimensions of all technological practice and technique, Marcia-Anne Dobres establishes instead the role of material items in all social discourse and social reproduction. As a poetic manifesto for technology and human action Technology and Social Agency will be a flash point of intelligent debate of these issues for the next decade, and perhaps beyond." Professor John Edward Clark, Brigham Young University. "The true value of this book is that it has brought together a wide range of previous work on technolgy. It is a well-referenced discussion of a significant trend in technological studies, an area of study to which Dobres herself has made a major contribution. I hope Dobres will continue to make a significant contribution to these debates." Bill Sillar, University College London, for Antiquity 2003 "I found the book a thorougly researched and well-argued example of an inter-disciplinary approach, bringing together ideas from phenomenological philosphy,the sociology of technology and science and from material culture debates within British and American Anthropology ... a well informed work that is both highly innovative and challenging." Cambridge AnthropologyTable of ContentsList of Figures. Preface. Acknowledgments. Introduction. 1. Of Black Boxes and Matters Material: The State of Things. 2. Deconstructing the Black Box: Some Philosophical and Historical Reflections on the Logos Tekhne. 3. Prying Open the Black Box: Philosophical Insights on Technology and Being. 4. A Synoptic Approach to Technology: Conceptual Contours of a Practice Framework. 5. Social Agency and Practice: The Heart and Soul of Technology. 6. Engendering the Chaine Operatoire: Methodological Issues. 7. A Future for Technology's Pasts. Notes. References. Index.
£102.55
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a
Book SynopsisThe book presents a new conceptual framework and a set of research principles with which to study and interpret technology from a phenomenological perspective.Trade Review"Technology and Social Agency is the most provocative and significant book on the relationship between the material world and the human condition to appear in anthropology since Leslie A. White's The Evolution of Culture (1959). Unlike its polemic predecessor, however, Technology and Social Agency avoids instrumental determinism and establishes the challenging alternative of technology as a total social fact centered around individual human beings in meaningful communities of cultural practice. In reaffirming the human and social dimensions of all technological practice and technique, Marcia-Anne Dobres establishes instead the role of material items in all social discourse and social reproduction. As a poetic manifesto for technology and human action Technology and Social Agency will be a flash point of intelligent debate of these issues for the next decade, and perhaps beyond." Professor John Edward Clark, Brigham Young University. "The true value of this book is that it has brought together a wide range of previous work on technolgy. It is a well-referenced discussion of a significant trend in technological studies, an area of study to which Dobres herself has made a major contribution. I hope Dobres will continue to make a significant contribution to these debates." Bill Sillar, University College London, for Antiquity 2003 "I found the book a thorougly researched and well-argued example of an inter-disciplinary approach, bringing together ideas from phenomenological philosphy,the sociology of technology and science and from material culture debates within British and American Anthropology ... a well informed work that is both highly innovative and challenging." Cambridge AnthropologyTable of ContentsList of Figures. Preface. Acknowledgments. Introduction. 1. Of Black Boxes and Matters Material: The State of Things. 2. Deconstructing the Black Box: Some Philosophical and Historical Reflections on the Logos Tekhne. 3. Prying Open the Black Box: Philosophical Insights on Technology and Being. 4. A Synoptic Approach to Technology: Conceptual Contours of a Practice Framework. 5. Social Agency and Practice: The Heart and Soul of Technology. 6. Engendering the Chaine Operatoire: Methodological Issues. 7. A Future for Technology's Pasts. Notes. References. Index.
£45.55
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Mismapping of America
Book SynopsisThe history of five major cartographic errrors of American geography that have had considerable resonance long after they were perpetrated. The Mismapping of America presents and analyzes the significant cartographic errors that have shaped the history of the United States. Perhaps the most blatant error is the very name "America," that honors Amerigo Vespucci,who not only never set foot on North American soil, but also played no significant role in the discovery of South America. The appearance of the name "America" imprinted on a map ensured its permanence. Other significant errors explored in The Mismapping of America include Giovanni da Verrazzano's misinterpretation of Pamlico or Albermarle Sound for the Pacific Ocean, thereby suggesting the presence of an isthmus in the middle of the North American continent; the existence of a direct North West passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; the misconception that California was an island; and the insertion on Lake Superior of a fictitious island that is specificallyreferred to in defining the boundary of the United States. The inclusion of pertinent rare maps enhances this rich and revealing narrative of several intriguing episodes in the history of the geographic evolution of the United States. Seymour I. Schwartz is the Distinguished Alumni Professor of Surgery at the University of Rochester, and an expert on the history of mapping America. He is the coauthor of Mapping of America and author of The French and Indian War 1754-1763: The Imperial Struggle for North America and This Land is Your Land.Trade ReviewThe Mismapping of America[is] an enjoyable book, packed with information and illustrated with 72 maps and portraits. THE PORTOLAN, Journal of the Washington Map Society * . *Besides being an enjoyable read, researchers will most likely be interested in this book for the author's thorough research and the lists of suggested additional reading. Western Association of Map Libraries * . *Entertaining account...if you have any flair for things related to sea navigation, then I do not think you will be disappointed. -- David H. Gray * INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MARITIME HISTORY *The map plates are . . . amazing. * THE GUARDIAN, November 22, 2008 *Table of ContentsThe Greatest Misnomer on Planet Earth Cinching a Corset of Convenience Depicting a Desire Formed fancy Persisted in Face of Facts French Fantasies
£25.19
Texas A & M University Press Electronics in the Evolution of Flight
Book SynopsisElectronics in the Evolution of Flight traces the paired history of modern aviation and electronics, or avionics, from its earliest years to the indispensable tool it is today. Albert Helfrick, who for twenty-five years has designed avionics for agencies and corporations such as NASA and Boeing, provides a thorough account of the roles played by the famous and the obscure, from Edwin Howard Armstrong to Nikola Tesla and David Sarnoff, in the successful creation of aviation technology. Helfrick focuses much of his work on the advancement of electronic systems. He explains the origins of technical definitions and acronyms such as Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) and the difference between short waves and microwaves. With an easy familiarity, he reviews topics as varied as the Morse code, the Radio Club of America, and the evolution of microprocessors. Helfrick covers the history of all of the engineering and electronic developments in a style that is accessible to lay readers, but also provides a valuable reference for specialists.
£30.36
Potomac Books Inc GPS Declassified
Book Synopsis
£22.79
Texas Tech Press,U.S. Doodlebugs and Dowsers: A History of Unusual Ways
Book SynopsisWhat lies beneath the ground? Our poor eyesight cannot penetrate even an inch into the soil, so for centuries, fortune-seekers have tried every way imaginable to see below the surface. Whether searching for mineral veins, groundwater, or buried treasure, people have looked for ways to avoid the plodding and backbreaking process of digging. They have followed dreams, seers, dowsing rods, and advice from the spirit world. When petroleum became an item of commerce, oil-hunters took to all these methods. Many built homemade inventions called doodlebugs, which they said could detect underground oil. It took a while, but science finally came up with its own toolbox of oil-finding methods in the early twentieth century. Finding oil is still expensive and risky, however. The old ways? They are mostly gone, but a few oil-dowsers still stride across fields with rod or pendulum, and no doubt people still consult dreams and psychics. And don’t pretend that you yourself haven’t wondered if that dowser might be onto something, or if that famous psychic can really tell where there is oil, or if that inventor stumbled onto a better way to detect underground oil. Of course you have. History is written by the victors, and scientists won over the oil industry—rightly so. But their accounts give short shrift to the rich history of less traditional ways to find oil. Although ignored, the records of nonscientific methods and their contributions to the oil business are well worthy of study. Lacking in science, they are rich in humanity. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear . . . wait, scratch that . . . these things are still going on. Join us in a visit to a place where dreams, seers, and spooks are taken seriously, where forked twigs dip toward oil pools and homemade oil-finding gizmos blink or beep with the promise of riches tucked just below the surface of the known world.
£22.46
Bucknell University Press,U.S. British Literature and Technology, 1600-1830
Book Synopsis Enlightenment-era writers had not yet come to take technology for granted, but nonetheless were—as we are today—both attracted to and repelled by its potential. This volume registers the deep history of such ambivalence, examining technology’s influence on Enlightenment British literature, as well as the impact of literature on conceptions of, attitudes toward, and implementations of technology. Offering a counterbalance to the abundance of studies on literature and science in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain, this volume’s focus encompasses approaches to literary history that help us understand technologies like the steam engine and the telegraph along with representations of technology in literature such as the “political machine.” Contributors ultimately show how literature across genres provided important sites for Enlightenment readers to recognize themselves as “chimeras”—“hybrids of machine and organism”—and to explore the modern self as “a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.” Table of ContentsIntroductionKristin M. Girten and Aaron R. HanlonChapter 1: Webster’s Baroque Experiments and the Testing of Technology in the Early 1600sLaura FrancisChapter 2: Telling Time in the Fiction of Mary Hearne and Daniel DefoeErik L. JohnsonChapter 3: The Technology and Theatricality of Three Hours after Marriage’s “Touch-Stone of Virginity”Thomas A. OldhamChapter 4: Gulliver’s Travels, Automation, and the Reckoning AuthorZachary M. MannChapter 5: Designing the Enlightenment AnthropoceneKevin MacDonnellChapter 6: Technology, Temporality, and Queer Form in Horace Walpole’s GothicEmily M. WestChapter 7: Telegraphic Supremacy in Maria Edgeworth’s “Lame Jervas”Deven M. ParkerChapter 8: Percy Shelley, Political Machines, and the Pre-History of the Post-LiberalJamison KantorAfterword: On the Uses of the History of Technology for Literary Studies and Vice VersaJoseph DruryBibliographyNotes on ContributorsIndex
£107.20
