Technology and the Growth of Civilization

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Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030255832
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology and the Growth of Civilization by : Giancarlo Genta

Download or read book Technology and the Growth of Civilization written by Giancarlo Genta and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our natural world has been irretrievably altered by humans, for humans. From domesticated wheat fields to nuclear power plants and spacecraft, everything we see and interact with has in some way been changed by the presence of our species, starting from the Neolithic era so many centuries ago. This book provides a crash course on the issues and debates surrounding technology’s shifting place in our society. It covers the history of our increasingly black-box world, which some theorize will end with technology accelerating beyond our understanding. At the same time, it analyzes competing trends and theories, the lack of scientific knowledge of large sections of the population, the dogmas of pseudoscience, and the growing suspicion of science and technology, which may inevitably lead to scientific stagnation. What will the future of our civilization look like? How soon might scientific acceleration or stagnation arrive at our doorstep, and just how radically will such technological shifts change our culture? These are issues that we must address now, to insure our future goes the way we choose.

Technology in World Civilization, revised and expanded edition

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262366282
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology in World Civilization, revised and expanded edition by : Arnold Pacey

Download or read book Technology in World Civilization, revised and expanded edition written by Arnold Pacey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition of a milestone work on the global history of technology. This milestone history of technology, first published in 1990 and now revised and expanded in light of recent research, broke new ground by taking a global view, avoiding the conventional Eurocentric perspective and placing the development of technology squarely in the context of a "world civilization." Case studies include "technological dialogues" between China and West Asia in the eleventh century, medieval African states and the Islamic world, and the United States and Japan post-1950. It examines railway empires through the examples of Russia and Japan and explores current synergies of innovation in energy supply and smartphone technology through African cases. The book uses the term "technological dialogue" to challenges the top-down concept of "technology transfer," showing instead that technologies are typically modified to fit local needs and conditions, often triggering further innovation. The authors trace these encounters and exchanges over a thousand years, examining changes in such technologies as agriculture, firearms, printing, electricity, and railroads. A new chapter brings the narrative into the twenty-first century, discussing technological developments including petrochemicals, aerospace, and digitalization from often unexpected global viewpoints and asking what new kind of industrial revolution is needed to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene.

Technology in World Civilization, revised and expanded edition

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262542463
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology in World Civilization, revised and expanded edition by : Arnold Pacey

Download or read book Technology in World Civilization, revised and expanded edition written by Arnold Pacey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition of a milestone work on the global history of technology. This milestone history of technology, first published in 1990 and now revised and expanded in light of recent research, broke new ground by taking a global view, avoiding the conventional Eurocentric perspective and placing the development of technology squarely in the context of a "world civilization." Case studies include "technological dialogues" between China and West Asia in the eleventh century, medieval African states and the Islamic world, and the United States and Japan post-1950. It examines railway empires through the examples of Russia and Japan and explores current synergies of innovation in energy supply and smartphone technology through African cases. The book uses the term "technological dialogue" to challenges the top-down concept of "technology transfer," showing instead that technologies are typically modified to fit local needs and conditions, often triggering further innovation. The authors trace these encounters and exchanges over a thousand years, examining changes in such technologies as agriculture, firearms, printing, electricity, and railroads. A new chapter brings the narrative into the twenty-first century, discussing technological developments including petrochemicals, aerospace, and digitalization from often unexpected global viewpoints and asking what new kind of industrial revolution is needed to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene.

Technology in World Civilization

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262660723
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (67 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology in World Civilization by : Arnold Pacey

Download or read book Technology in World Civilization written by Arnold Pacey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1991-07-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most general histories of technology are Eurocentrist, focusing on a main line of Western technology that stretches from the Greeks is through the computer. In this very different book, Arnold Pacey takes a global view, placing the development of technology squarely in a "world civilization." He portrays the process as a complex dialectic by which inventions borrowed from one culture are adopted to suit another.

Technology and Civilization

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 24 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Technology and Civilization by : Mary A. Vance

Download or read book Technology and Civilization written by Mary A. Vance and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Future of Technological Civilization

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Author :
Publisher : George Braziller
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (89 download)

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Book Synopsis The Future of Technological Civilization by : Victor C. Ferkiss

Download or read book The Future of Technological Civilization written by Victor C. Ferkiss and published by George Braziller. This book was released on 1974 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Techniques, Technology and Civilization

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Author :
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1571816623
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (718 download)

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Book Synopsis Techniques, Technology and Civilization by : Marcel Mauss

Download or read book Techniques, Technology and Civilization written by Marcel Mauss and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2006-03 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marcel Mauss's writings on techniques and technology are at the forefront of an important anthropological and sociological research tradition, and they also highlight the theoretical and ideological challenges surrounding this field of study. A selection of Mauss's texts — including his major statements on methodology, on body techniques, on practical reason, on nation and civilisation, on progress, and so forth — are here translated and presented together for the first time, with a discussion of their context, impact and implications. This book will interest scholars and students dealing with the French sociological tradition, and also more generally those concerned with technology and material culture studies in archaeological,anthropological or contemporary settings.

Technology and Values in American Civilization

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Author :
Publisher : Gale Cengage
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 736 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology and Values in American Civilization by : Stephen H. Cutcliffe

Download or read book Technology and Values in American Civilization written by Stephen H. Cutcliffe and published by Gale Cengage. This book was released on 1980 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Energy and Civilization

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262536161
Total Pages : 564 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Energy and Civilization by : Vaclav Smil

Download or read book Energy and Civilization written by Vaclav Smil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.

Technology in Western Civilization: Technology in the twentieth century

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 802 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology in Western Civilization: Technology in the twentieth century by : Melvin Kranzberg

Download or read book Technology in Western Civilization: Technology in the twentieth century written by Melvin Kranzberg and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1967 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete and well-planned account of the history of technology in Western civilization from pre-historic man to the present age of the computer.

The Measure of Civilization

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400844762
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis The Measure of Civilization by : Ian Morris

Download or read book The Measure of Civilization written by Ian Morris and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-27 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking look at Western and Eastern social development from the end of the ice age to today In the past thirty years, there have been fierce debates over how civilizations develop and why the West became so powerful. The Measure of Civilization presents a brand-new way of investigating these questions and provides new tools for assessing the long-term growth of societies. Using a groundbreaking numerical index of social development that compares societies in different times and places, award-winning author Ian Morris sets forth a sweeping examination of Eastern and Western development across 15,000 years since the end of the last ice age. He offers surprising conclusions about when and why the West came to dominate the world and fresh perspectives for thinking about the twenty-first century. Adapting the United Nations' approach for measuring human development, Morris's index breaks social development into four traits—energy capture per capita, organization, information technology, and war-making capacity—and he uses archaeological, historical, and current government data to quantify patterns. Morris reveals that for 90 percent of the time since the last ice age, the world's most advanced region has been at the western end of Eurasia, but contrary to what many historians once believed, there were roughly 1,200 years—from about 550 to 1750 CE—when an East Asian region was more advanced. Only in the late eighteenth century CE, when northwest Europeans tapped into the energy trapped in fossil fuels, did the West leap ahead. Resolving some of the biggest debates in global history, The Measure of Civilization puts forth innovative tools for determining past, present, and future economic and social trends.

Technology: A World History

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199713669
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology: A World History by : Daniel R. Headrick Professor of Social Sciences and History Roosevelt University

Download or read book Technology: A World History written by Daniel R. Headrick Professor of Social Sciences and History Roosevelt University and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2009-02-25 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today technology has created a world of dazzling progress, growing disparities of wealth and poverty, and looming threats to the environment. Technology: A World History offers an illuminating backdrop to our present moment--a brilliant history of invention around the globe. Historian Daniel R. Headrick ranges from the Stone Age and the beginnings of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution and the electronic revolution of the recent past. In tracing the growing power of humans over nature through increasingly powerful innovations, he compares the evolution of technology in different parts of the world, providing a much broader account than is found in other histories of technology. We also discover how small changes sometimes have dramatic results--how, for instance, the stirrup revolutionized war and gave the Mongols a deadly advantage over the Chinese. And how the nailed horseshoe was a pivotal breakthrough for western farmers. Enlivened with many illustrations, Technology offers a fascinating look at the spread of inventions around the world, both as boons for humanity and as weapons of destruction.

Technics and Civilization

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Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226550273
Total Pages : 524 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis Technics and Civilization by : Lewis Mumford

Download or read book Technics and Civilization written by Lewis Mumford and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-10-30 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technics and Civilization first presented its compelling history of the machine and critical study of its effects on civilization in 1934—before television, the personal computer, and the Internet even appeared on our periphery. Drawing upon art, science, philosophy, and the history of culture, Lewis Mumford explained the origin of the machine age and traced its social results, asserting that the development of modern technology had its roots in the Middle Ages rather than the Industrial Revolution. Mumford sagely argued that it was the moral, economic, and political choices we made, not the machines that we used, that determined our then industrially driven economy. Equal parts powerful history and polemic criticism, Technics and Civilization was the first comprehensive attempt in English to portray the development of the machine age over the last thousand years—and to predict the pull the technological still holds over us today. “The questions posed in the first paragraph of Technics and Civilization still deserve our attention, nearly three quarters of a century after they were written.”—Journal of Technology and Culture

Building Civilization

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Publisher : Tech Directions Books & Media
ISBN 13 : 9780970339829
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (398 download)

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Book Synopsis Building Civilization by : Dennis Karwatka

Download or read book Building Civilization written by Dennis Karwatka and published by Tech Directions Books & Media. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The publisher offers a special price for purchasing this text along with two related volumes: Connecting Civilization: the Growth of Communication and Moving Civilization; the Growth of Transportation. At a reading level appropriate for high school students, this work traces technical developments that advanced the methods used in construction, manufacturing, and machine tooling, primarily in America, during the 19th century. The 44 biographies that comprise the second half of the book are reprinted from Technology's Past by the same author, who teaches at Morehead State University. B & w photographs accompany the text. Distributed by Prakken Publications. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Growth

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262042835
Total Pages : 665 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Growth by : Vaclav Smil

Download or read book Growth written by Vaclav Smil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations. Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations. Smil takes readers from bacterial invasions through animal metabolisms to megacities and the global economy. He begins with organisms whose mature sizes range from microscopic to enormous, looking at disease-causing microbes, the cultivation of staple crops, and human growth from infancy to adulthood. He examines the growth of energy conversions and man-made objects that enable economic activities—developments that have been essential to civilization. Finally, he looks at growth in complex systems, beginning with the growth of human populations and proceeding to the growth of cities. He considers the challenges of tracing the growth of empires and civilizations, explaining that we can chart the growth of organisms across individual and evolutionary time, but that the progress of societies and economies, not so linear, encompasses both decline and renewal. The trajectory of modern civilization, driven by competing imperatives of material growth and biospheric limits, Smil tells us, remains uncertain.

Against the Grain

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780302240212
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Against the Grain by : James C. Scott

Download or read book Against the Grain written by James C. Scott and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of all the new and surprising evidence now available for the beginnings of the earliest civilizations that contradict the standard narrative. Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family-all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction. Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the "barbarians" who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.

Money Changes Everything

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691178372
Total Pages : 598 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Money Changes Everything by : William N. Goetzmann

Download or read book Money Changes Everything written by William N. Goetzmann and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[A] magnificent history of money and finance."—New York Times Book Review "Convincingly makes the case that finance is a change-maker of change-makers."—Financial Times In the aftermath of recent financial crises, it's easy to see finance as a wrecking ball: something that destroys fortunes and jobs, and undermines governments and banks. In Money Changes Everything, leading financial historian William Goetzmann argues the exact opposite—that the development of finance has made the growth of civilizations possible. Goetzmann explains that finance is a time machine, a technology that allows us to move value forward and backward through time; and that this innovation has changed the very way we think about and plan for the future. He shows how finance was present at key moments in history: driving the invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, spurring the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome to become great empires, determining the rise and fall of dynasties in imperial China, and underwriting the trade expeditions that led Europeans to the New World. He also demonstrates how the apparatus we associate with a modern economy—stock markets, lines of credit, complex financial products, and international trade—were repeatedly developed, forgotten, and reinvented over the course of human history. Exploring the critical role of finance over the millennia, and around the world, Goetzmann details how wondrous financial technologies and institutions—money, bonds, banks, corporations, and more—have helped urban centers to expand and cultures to flourish. And it's not done reshaping our lives, as Goetzmann considers the challenges we face in the future, such as how to use the power of finance to care for an aging and expanding population. Money Changes Everything presents a fascinating look into the way that finance has steered the course of history.