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Human societies have not always taken on new technology in
appropriate ways. Innovations are double-edged swords that
transform relationships among people, as well as between human
societies and the natural world. Only through successful cultural
appropriation can we manage to control the hubris that is
fundamental to the innovative, enterprising human spirit; and only
by becoming hybrids, combining the human and the technological,
will we be able to make effective use of our scientific and
technological achievements.
This broad cultural history of technology and science provides a
range of stories and reflections about the past, discussing areas
such as film, industrial design, and alternative environmental
technologies, and including not only European and North American,
but also Asian examples, to help resolve the contradictions of
contemporary high-tech civilization.
In this open access book, Mikael Hard tells a story of how people
around the world challenged the production techniques and products
brought by globalization. Retaining their autonomy and freedom,
creative individuals selectively adopted or rejected modern
gadgets, tools, and machines. In standard historical narratives,
globalization is portrayed as an unstoppable force that flattens
all obstacles in its path. Modern technology is also seen as
inexorable: in the nineteenth century, steamships, telegraph lines,
and Gatling guns are said to have paved the way for colonialism and
other forms of dominating people and societies. Later, shipping
containers and computer networks purportedly pulled the planet
deeper into a maelstrom of capitalism. Hard discusses instances
that push back against these narratives. For example, in Soviet
times, inhabitants of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, preferred to remain
in-and expand-their own mud-brick houses rather than move into
prefabricated, concrete residential buildings. Similarly,
nineteenth-century Sumatran carpenters ignored the saws brought to
them by missionaries-and chose to chop down trees with their
arch-bladed adzes. And people in colonial India successfully
competed with capitalist-run Caribbean sugar plantations,
continuing to produce their own muscovado and sell it to local
consumers. This book invites readers to view the history of
technology and material culture through the lens of diversity.
Based on research funded by the European Research Council and
conducted in the Global South, Microhistories of Technology: Making
the World shows that the spread of modern technologies did not
erase artisanal production methods and traditional tools.
Who has decided how Europeans have dressed and dwelled? Traveled
and dined? Worked and played? Who, in fact, can be credited with
the shaping of Europe? Certainly inventors, engineers, and
politicians played their parts. But in the making of Europe,
consumers, tinkerers, and rebels were an unrecognized force - until
now. In this book, historians Ruth Oldenziel and Mikael Hard
spotlight the people who 'made' Europe - by appropriating
technology, protesting for and against it. Using examples from
Britain and the Continent, the authors illustrate the conflicts
that accompanied the modern technologies, from the sewing machine
to the bicycle, the Barbie doll to personal computers. What emerges
is a fascinating portrait of how Europeans have lived, from the
1850s to the current century.
Human societies have not always taken on new technology in
appropriate ways. Innovations are double-edged swords that
transform relationships among people, as well as between human
societies and the natural world. Only through successful cultural
appropriation can we manage to control the hubris that is
fundamental to the innovative, enterprising human spirit; and only
by becoming hybrids, combining the human and the technological,
will we be able to make effective use of our scientific and
technological achievements.
This broad cultural history of technology and science provides a
range of stories and reflections about the past, discussing areas
such as film, industrial design, and alternative environmental
technologies, and including not only European and North American,
but also Asian examples, to help resolve the contradictions of
contemporary high-tech civilization.
In this open access book, Mikael Hard tells a story of how people
around the world challenged the production techniques and products
brought by globalization. Retaining their autonomy and freedom,
creative individuals selectively adopted or rejected modern
gadgets, tools, and machines. In standard historical narratives,
globalization is portrayed as an unstoppable force that flattens
all obstacles in its path. Modern technology is also seen as
inexorable: in the nineteenth century, steamships, telegraph lines,
and Gatling guns are said to have paved the way for colonialism and
other forms of dominating people and societies. Later, shipping
containers and computer networks purportedly pulled the planet
deeper into a maelstrom of capitalism. Hard discusses instances
that push back against these narratives. For example, in Soviet
times, inhabitants of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, preferred to remain
in-and expand-their own mud-brick houses rather than move into
prefabricated, concrete residential buildings. Similarly,
nineteenth-century Sumatran carpenters ignored the saws brought to
them by missionaries-and chose to chop down trees with their
arch-bladed adzes. And people in colonial India successfully
competed with capitalist-run Caribbean sugar plantations,
continuing to produce their own muscovado and sell it to local
consumers. This book invites readers to view the history of
technology and material culture through the lens of diversity.
Based on research funded by the European Research Council and
conducted in the Global South, Microhistories of Technology: Making
the World shows that the spread of modern technologies did not
erase artisanal production methods and traditional tools.
Starting around 1900, technology became a lively subject for
debate among intellectuals, writers, and other opinion leaders. The
expansion of the machine into ever more areas of social and
economic life had led to a need to interpret its meanings in a more
comprehensive way than in the past. World War I and its aftermath
shifted the terms of this ongoing debate by underlining both the
potential dangers of technology and its centrality to modern
life.This book examines the broad range of social and intellectual
responses to technology in the first four decades of this century,
and suggests that these responses set the terms that continue to
govern contemporary debates. Focusing on the broader contexts
within which intellectual positions are formed, the book highlights
the ways in which attitudes toward technology were shaped in a wide
variety of national and organizational settings. A common theme is
that, in debating technology, people drew on their distinctive
national symbols and cultural traditions. By emphasizing the
interplay between debates on technology and the making of
modernity, the book challenges standard historical accounts of the
early twentieth century.Contributors: Ketil G. Andersen, Aant
Elzinga, Tor Halvorsen, Mikael Hard, Kjetil Jakobsen, Andrew
Jamison, Catharina Landstrom, Conny Mithander, Sissel Myklebust,
Dick van Lente, Peter Wagner."
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