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Overview"Thomas Jefferson, for instance, optimistically hoped that technology could be combined with nature to create an Edenic environment; Lewis Mumford, two centuries later, warned of the increasing mechanization of American life. Such divergent views, Hughes shows, have existed side by side, demonstrating the fundamental idea that ""in its variety, technology is full of contradictions, laden with human folly, saved by occasional benign deeds, and rich with unintended consequences."" Human-Built World is the highly engaging history of these contradictions, follies, and consequences, a history that resurrects technology, rightfully, as more than gadgetry; it is no less than an embodiment of human values." Full Product DetailsAuthor: Thomas P. HughesPublisher: The University of Chicago Press Imprint: University of Chicago Press Edition: 2nd ed. Dimensions: Width: 14.30cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 21.20cm Weight: 0.364kg ISBN: 9780226359335ISBN 10: 0226359336 Pages: 224 Publication Date: 01 July 2004 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Out of Stock Indefinitely Availability: In Print Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock. Table of ContentsReviewsThomas P. Hughes presents a wide-ranging yet deeply insightful view of technology and how its relationship to society and culture has changed over time. Readers of this book will benefit greatly from Hughes's informed and understanding perspective on what technology is and how it is perceived. - Henry Petroski, author of Small Things Considered; Human-Built World offers a thoroughgoing, incisively rendered and engaging history of humanity's relationship to technology.... Although Hughes gives invention and engineering a central role in the creation of our world, the purpose of his sprightly polemic is to rail against technological determinism.... As technically based systems already invisibly govern so much of our daily lives and will continue to penetrate our culture still further, this is a timely and urgent book. - Adam Wishart, Times Literary Supplement; Do we 'think' about technology? Probably not. It is the stuff that surrounds us. Yet even if we no longer wonder at the internet or mobile telephones, we worry about chemical weapons and human cloning. Indeed, as Thomas P. Hughes shows in this brilliantly concise history, people were arguing about the rights and wrongs of technology long before the term gained currency in the late 20th century. - Mark Archer, Financial Times Author InformationThomas P. Hughes is the Mellon Professor Emeritus in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hughes has honorary doctorates from Northwestern University and the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology. A member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, he is the editor of seven books and author of four, including American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |