Description
Book SynopsisNow updated A comprehensive, 500-year history of technology in society. Historian Thomas J. Misa's sweeping history of the relationship between technology and society over the past 500 years reveals how technological innovations have shapedand have been shaped bythe cultures in which they arose. Spanning the preindustrial past, the age of scientific, political, and industrial revolutions, as well as the more recent eras of imperialism, modernism, and global security, this compelling work evaluates what Misa calls the question of technology.In this edition, Misa brings his acclaimed text up to date by drawing on current scholarship while retaining sharply drawn portraits of individual people, artifacts, and systems. Each chapter has been honed to relate to contemporary concerns. Globalization, Misa argues, looks differently considering today's virulent nationalism, cultural chauvinism, and trade wars. A new chapter focuses on the digital age from 1990 to 2016. The book also examines
Trade ReviewThis book is indispensable and exciting reading for both scholars and a wider audience.
—Emanuela Scarpellini,
Technology & CultureTable of ContentsList of Figures and Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Technologies of the Court, 1450–1600
Chapter 2. Techniques of Commerce, 1588–1740
Chapter 3. Geographies of Industry, 1740–1851
Chapter 4. Instruments of Empire, 1840–1914
Chapter 5. Science and Systems, 1870–1930
Chapter 6. Materials of Modernism, 1900–1950
Chapter 7. The Means of Destruction, 1936–1990
Chapter 8. Promises of Global Culture, 1970–2001
Chapter 9. Paths to Insecurity, 2001–2010
Chapter 10. Dominance of the Digital, 1990–2016
Chapter 11. The Question of Technology
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
