TECHNOLOGY AND THE REST OF CULTURE - Hardcover

MACK, ARIEN

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081420869X ISBN 13: 9780814208694

Publisher: Ohio State University Press, 2001

Synopsis

From the printing press to Palm Pilots, we often rush to embrace new inventions that promise to make life easier. Yet the history of modern warfare suggests that new technologies can also have drastic and dire consequences. Technology and the Rest of Culture explores this tension by identifying the many ways in which technology shapes our society, investigating whether culture has an impact on the rate and direction of technological achievement, and describing how technology seems to have taken on a life and culture of its own.

Nicholas Humphrey, Marvin Minsky, Peter Galison, and Joshua Lederberg explore the complex relationship between science and technology, showing that scientific advancement has often followed technological achievements, rather than the other way around. Ira Katznelson, Alan Ryan, Paul Gewirtz, and Robert McC. Adams consider how shifts in the means and terms of communication affect democracy, free expression, and the law. Rosalind Williams, George Kateb, John Hollander, and Robert L. Herbert challenge the notion that technological images and themes express primarily logic, utility, functionality, and rationality, asserting instead that violent, aggressive, and destructive images are all too often the end result of technology.

At times somber, at times playful, but always challenging and thought-provoking, Technology and the Rest of Culture culls many academic disciplines to discover important elements about one of the most central characteristics of life in the twenty-first century.

About this title

About the Author:

Arien Mack is Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research, editor of the journal Social Research, and editor of In Time of Plague: The History and Social Consequences of Lethal Epidemic Disease, also published by NYU Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ohio State University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 081420869X
• ISBN 13: 9780814208694
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 395