Technology, perhaps the most salient feature of our time, affects
everything from jobs to international law yet ranks among the most
unpredictable facets of human life. Here Robert McC. Adams, renowned
anthropologist and Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution,
builds a new approach to understanding the circumstances that drive
technological change, stressing its episodic, irregular nature. The
result is nothing less than a sweeping history of technological
transformation from ancient times until now. Rare in antiquity, the
bursts of innovations that mark the advance of technology have
gradually accelerated and now have become an almost continuous feature
of our culture. Repeatedly shifting in direction, this path has been
shaped by a host of interacting social, cultural, and scientific
forces rather than any deterministic logic. Thus future technological
developments, Adams maintains, are predictable only over the very
short term. Adams's account highlights Britain and the United States
from early modern times onward. Locating the roots of the Industrial
Revolution in British economic and social institutions, he goes on to
consider the new forms of enterprise in which it was embodied and its
loss of momentum in the later nineteenth century. He then turns to the
early United States, whose path toward industrialization initially
involved considerable "technology transfer" from Britain. Propelled by
the advent of mass production, world industrial leadership passed to
the United States around the end of the nineteenth century.
Government-supported research and development, guided partly by
military interests, helped secure this leadership. Today, as Adams
shows, we find ourselves in a profoundly changed era. The United
States has led the way to a strikingly new multinational pattern of
opportunity and risk, where technological primacy can no longer be
credited to any single nation. This recent trend places even more
responsibility on the state to establish policies that will keep
markets open for its companies and make its industries more
competitive. Adams concludes with an argument for active government
support of science and technology research that should be read by
anyone interested in America's ability to compete globally.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400822225
Publisert
2013
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter