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An engaging look at how we have learned to live with innovation and
new technologies through history. People have had trouble adapting
to new technology ever since (perhaps) the inventor of the wheel
had to explain that a wheelbarrow could carry more than a person.
This little book by a celebrated MIT professor-the fiftieth
anniversary edition of a classic-describes how we learn to live and
work with innovation. Elting Morison considers, among other things,
the three stages of users' resistance to change: ignoring it;
rational rebuttal; and name-calling. He recounts the illustrative
anecdote of the World War II artillerymen who stood still to hold
the horses despite the fact that the guns were now hitched to
trucks-reassuring those of us who have trouble with a new interface
or a software upgrade that we are not the first to encounter such
problems. Morison offers an entertaining series of historical
accounts to highlight his major theme: the nature of technological
change and society's reaction to that change. He begins with
resistance to innovation in the U.S. Navy following an officer's
discovery of a more accurate way to fire a gun at sea; continues
with thoughts about bureaucracy, paperwork, and card files; touches
on rumble seats, the ghost in Hamlet, and computers; tells the
strange history of a new model steamship in the 1860s; and
describes the development of the Bessemer steel process. Each
instance teaches a lesson about the more profound and current
problem of how to organize and manage systems of ideas, energies,
and machinery so that it will conform to the human dimension.
This is the story of a historically small and relatively poor
state, which seems in our own time increasingly attractive to those
who seek what the authors call a simple kind of life lost
elsewhere. Posing questions about land use and balanced growth that
are important to all Americans, the Morisons' account of New
Hampshire and its fluctuating fortunes will fascinate both
residents and those who only visit or dream of doing so.
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