A social history of American technology / Ruth Schwartz Cowan with Matthew H. Hersch

Author:: Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, 1941-
Published:: New York : Oxford University Press, [2018]
Copyright Date:: ©2018
Edition:: Second edition.
Physical Description:: xv, 368 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Additional Creators:: Hersch, Matthew H.

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Contents:

Part I. Introduction -- The land, the natives and the settlers -- Agricultural and craft work in the colonies -- From farm to factory -- Transportation revolutions -- Part II. Industrial society -- Technological systems and industrial society -- Everyday labor in the mechanical age -- Inventors, entrepreneurs, and engineers -- Part III. New frontiers, new fears -- Automobiles and automobility -- Taxpayers, generals, and aerospace -- Electronic communication and social control -- Electronic brains and global villages -- Foods, drugs and unintended consequences -- TechnoScience and the biotech industry -- Coda: Thinking about technology.

Summary:

A Social History of American Technology, Second Edition, tells the story of American technology from the tools used by its earliest inhabitants to the technological systems--cars and computers, aircraft and antibiotics--that we are familiar with today. Ruth Schwartz Cowan and Matthew H. Hersch demonstrate how technological change has always been closely related to social and economic development, and examine the important mutual relationships between social history and technological change. They explain how the unique characteristics of American cultures and American geography have affected the technologies that have been invented, manufactured, and used throughout the years--and also the reverse: how those technologies have affected the daily lives, the unique cultures, and the environments of all Americans. New to this Edition: An updated discussion of the automobile, including fuel efficiency, electric vehicles, the decline of the Big Four auto companies, and climate change; An extended examination of aerospace technology, including satellites, space shuttles, GPS, and precision-guided weapons; An expanded examination of wireless telegraphy, radio, and television and other electronic media; New material on information technologies, from mainframe computers to personal computers, the internet, social media and smartphones; A new examination of twentieth-century food and drug technologies, in terms of their unintended consequences, reframed as examples of technoscience; A new chapter on biotechnology, explaining the science of genetic modification and exploring genetically modified bacteria as drug factories and genetically modified plants as food products.--Publisher website.

Subject(s):

Genre(s):

History

ISBN:

9780195387261 (paperback)
0195387260 (paperback)

Bibliography Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Source of Acquisition:

Purchased with funds from the Engineering Graduate Student Council Libraries Endowment; 2017

Endowment Note:

Engineering Graduate Student Council Libraries Endowment
Paterno Libraries Endowment (Campus College Libraries)

View MARC record | catkey: 21833081