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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, 1941- author.

Hersch, Matthew H., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Technology--Social aspects--United States--History.

Technology--Social aspects.

United States.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 368 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, [2018]

Summary:

The number one survey of American technology, from the tools used by the earliest native inhabitants to today's technological systems, 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 the 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 factors and genetically modified plants as food products Book jacket.

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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780195387261

0195387260

OCLC:

961035072