The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900

By David Edgerton

Book Overview

From the books of H.G. Wells to the press releases of NASA, we are awash in clich?d claims about high technology's ability to change the course of history. Now, in The Shock of the Old, David Edgerton offers a startling new and fresh way of thinking about the history of technology, radically revising our ideas about the interaction of technology and society in the past and in the present. He challenges us to view the history of technology in terms of what everyday people have actually used-and continue to use-rather than just sophisticated inventions. Indeed, many highly touted technologies, from the V-2 rocket to the Concorde jet, have been costly failures, while many mundane discoveries, like corrugated iron, become hugely important around the world. Edgerton reassesses the significance of such acclaimed inventions as the Pill and information technology, and underscores the continued importance of unheralded technology, debunking many notions about the implications of the "information age." A provocative history, The Shock of the Old provides an entirely new way of looking historically at the relationship between invention and innovation.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195322835
• ISBN13: 9780195322835
• Release Date: December 2006
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A top pick for college-level history holdings

THE SHOCK OF THE OLD: TECHNOLOGY AND GLOBAL HISTORY SINCE 1900 draws some important connections between technological advancements and world history, drawing interconnected analysis of global history and issues of the arts, production, politics and war. This history here is surveyed with an emphasis on what people actually used from technology, rather than inventions: a focus which lends depth and some surprising revelations...

Superb!

This book is simply the best broad analysis of the role of technology in society that one can read: Superb! My only criticism is that the author occasionally slips in gratuitous (or at the least, unbalanced by counter-examples or context) anti-American remarks. While distracting, this bias is entirely predictable from a UK academic of his generation; his central ideas can be recommended without reservations of any kind...

A radically different view of the history of technology through the eyes of one of Britain's leading

Every day each one of us is bombarded by commercial messages touting the latest and greatest products. You can now purchase a self-cleaning hot tub or a cell phone that can store and play thousands of songs. But just how much useful innovation is really taking place in the opening decade of the 21st Century? In "The Shock of The Old" author David Edgerton offers the somewhat controversial proposition that in spite of all...

A needed rethink

A look at the 20th Century with a fresh eye. The essential point - we didn't live through a period of great technological change, it was a period of technological stability. Think of the changes from 1807 to 1907, then from 1907 to 2007. Which saw the greater change? And that's the point discussed with wit and verve.