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Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism

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ISBN-10: 0262691671

ISBN-13: 9780262691673

Edition: 1994

Authors: Merritt Roe Smith, Leo Marx

List price: $50.00
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Description:

These thirteen essays explore a crucial historical question that has been notoriously hard to pin down: To what extent, and by what means, does a society's technology determine its political, social, economic, and cultural forms? Karl Marx launched the modern debate on determinism with his provocative remark that "the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist," and a classic article by Robert Heilbroner (reprinted here) renewed the debate within the context of the history of technology. This book clarifies the debate and carries it forward. Marx's position has become embedded in our culture, in the form of constant reminders…    
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Book details

List price: $50.00
Copyright year: 1994
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 6/2/1994
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 298
Size: 6.06" wide x 9.00" long x 0.61" tall
Weight: 1.298
Language: English

Merritt Roe Smith is Leverett Howell and William King Cutten Professor of the History of Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Scholar, writer and educator Leo Marx was educated at Harvard University, where he received a B. A. and a Ph. D. Marx taught at the University of Minnesota, Amherst College, and MIT. The school has also created the Leo Marx Career Development Professorship in the History and Culture of Science and Technology to honor his service. Marx's works, such as "The Machine in the Garden," explore the relationship between technology and culture in the past two centuries.

Introduction
Technological Determinism in American Culture
Recourse of Empire: Landscapes of Progress in Technological America
Do Machines Make History?
Technological Determinism Revisited
Three Faces of Technological Determinism
Technological Momentum
Retrieving Sociotechnical Change from Technological Determinism
Determinism and Indeterminacy in the History of Technology
Technological Determinism in Agrarian Societies
Determinism and Pre-Industrial Technology
The Political and Feminist Dimensions of Technological Determinism
The Idea of "Technology" and Postmodern Pessimism
Rationality versus Contingency in the History of Technology
Contributors
Index