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Technologies of power : essays in honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes / edited by Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht.
- Format:
- Book
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Technology--History.
- Technology.
- Technology and state--History.
- Technology and state.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (xx, 339 pages) : illustrations
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©2001.
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- This collection explores how technologies become forms of power, how people embed their authority in technological systems, and how the machines and the knowledge that make up technical systems strengthen or reshape social, political, and cultural power. The authors suggest ways in which a more nuanced investigation of technology's complex history can enrich our understanding of the changing meanings of modernity. They consider the relationship among the state, expertise, and authority; the construction of national identity; changes in the structure and distribution of labor; political ideology and industrial development; and political practices during the Cold War. The essays show how insight into the technological aspects of such broad processes can help synthesize material and cultural methods of inquiry and how reframing technology's past in broader historical terms can suggest new directions for science and technology studies.The essays were written in honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes, whose spirit of inquiry they seek to continue.ContributorsJanet Abbate, Michael Thad Allen, W. Bernard Carlson, Gabrielle Hecht, Erik P. Rau, Eric Schatzberg, Amy Slaton, John Staudenmaier, Edmund N. Todd, Hans Weinberger
- Contents:
- Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgments vii
- Disciplined Imagination: The Life and Work of Tom and Agatha
- Hughes ix
- John M. Staudenmaier, S.J.
- Introduction: Authority, Political Machines, and Technology's
- History 1
- Gabrielle Hecht and Michael Thad Allen
- The Telephone as Political Instrument: Gardiner Hubbard and the
- Formation of the Middle Class in America, 1875-1880 25
- W. Bernard Carlson
- Culture and Technology in the City: Opposition to Mechanized Street
- Transportation in Late-Nineteenth-Century America 57
- Eric Schatzberg
- The Hidden Lives of Standards: Technical Prescriptions and the
- Transformation of Work in America 95
- Amy Slaton and Janet Abbate
- Engineering Politics, Technological Fundamentalism, and German Power
- Technology, 1900-1936 145
- Edmund N. Todd
- Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History 175
- Michael Thad Allen
- Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making: The British
- Origins of Operational Research 215
- Erik P. Rau
- Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France 253
- Gabrielle Hecht
- The Neutrality Flagpole: Swedish Neutrality Policy and Technological
- Alliances, 1945-1970 295
- Hans Weinberger
- About the Authors 333
- Index 337.
- Notes:
- Includes index.
- OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
- ISBN:
- 0-262-26703-9
- 1-4237-3069-0
- OCLC:
- 62160715
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