Civilizing the Machine

Civilizing the Machine PDF Author: John F. Kasson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0809016206
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
A major theme in American history has been the desire to achieve a genuinely republican way of life that values liberty, order, and virtue. This work shows us how new technologies affected this drive for a republican civilization - a question as vital now as ever.

Civilizing the Machine

Civilizing the Machine PDF Author: John F. Kasson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0809016206
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
A major theme in American history has been the desire to achieve a genuinely republican way of life that values liberty, order, and virtue. This work shows us how new technologies affected this drive for a republican civilization - a question as vital now as ever.

The Civilizing Machine

The Civilizing Machine PDF Author: Michael Matthews
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496209044
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
In late nineteenth-century Mexico the Mexican populace was fascinated with the country’s booming railroad network. Newspapers and periodicals were filled with art, poetry, literature, and social commentaries exploring the symbolic power of the railroad. As a symbol of economic, political, and industrial modernization, the locomotive served to demarcate a nation’s status in the world. However, the dangers of locomotive travel, complicated by the fact that Mexico’s railroads were foreign owned and operated, meant that the railroad could also symbolize disorder, death, and foreign domination. In The Civilizing Machine Michael Matthews explores the ideological and cultural milieu that shaped the Mexican people’s understanding of technology. Intrinsically tied to the Porfiriato, the thirty-five-year dictatorship of Gen. Porfirio Díaz, the booming railroad network represented material progress in a country seeking its place in the modern world. Matthews discloses how the railroad’s development represented the crowning achievement of the regime and the material incarnation of its mantra, “order and progress.” The Porfirian administration evoked the railroad in legitimizing and justifying its own reign, while political opponents employed the same rhetorical themes embodied by the railroads to challenge the manner in which that regime achieved economic development and modernization. As Matthews illustrates, the multiple symbols of the locomotive reflected deepening social divisions and foreshadowed the conflicts that eventually brought about the Mexican Revolution.

Technics and Civilization

Technics and Civilization PDF Author: Lewis Mumford
Publisher: Peter Smith Pub Incorporated
ISBN: 9780844661155
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This is a history of the machine and a critical study of its effects on civilization. Mumford has drawn on every aspect of life to explain the machine and to trace its social results. "An extraordinarily wide-ranging, sensitive, and provocative book about a subject upon which philosophers have so far shed but little light" (Journal of Philosophy). Index; illustrations.

Machines as the Measure of Men

Machines as the Measure of Men PDF Author: Michael Adas
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801497605
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
This new edition of what has become a standard account of Western expansion and technological dominance includes a new preface by the author that discusses how subsequent developments in gender and race studies, as well as global technology and politics, enter into conversation with his original arguments.

Modern Technology and Civilization

Modern Technology and Civilization PDF Author: Charles Rumford Walker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Technology and civilization
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description


Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology

Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology PDF Author: Merritt Roe Smith
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801491818
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
A study of the day-to-day operations of the U.S. armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, between 1798 and 1861, reveals the impact of the then new technology of mechanized production on organization, management, and worker morale.

Technics and Civilization

Technics and Civilization PDF Author: Lewis Mumford
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226550273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
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

The Concrete Plateau

The Concrete Plateau PDF Author: Andrew Grant
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150176411X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
In The Concrete Plateau, Andrew Grant examines the ways that urbanization has extended into the Tibetan Plateau. Many people still think of Tibetans as not being urban, or that if they do live in cities, this means that they have lost something. Much of this is relates to the expectation that urbanization can only erode essential aspects of Tibetan culture. Grant pushes back against this notion through his in-depth exploration of Tibetans' experiences with urban life in the growing city of Xining, the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau. Grant shows how Tibetans' actions to sustain their community challenge China's civilizing machine: a product of state-led urbanization that seeks to marginalize ethnic and indigenous groups. In their homes, neighborhoods, and businesses, Tibetans' assertion of cultural identity and modification of the built environment has prevented their assimilation into China's national urban project. The Concrete Plateau presents insights into the politics of urban development not only in Tibet and China, but to contexts of urban diversity all around world. Its findings are important for studies of urban development in the Global South where in-migrating ethnic and indigenous groups are negotiating top-down urban projects. Grant's book offers a profound rethinking of urbanization, rurality, culture, and the politics of place.

The Responsibility of Mind in a Civilization of Machines

The Responsibility of Mind in a Civilization of Machines PDF Author: Perry Miller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Book Description


The Civilizing Machine

The Civilizing Machine PDF Author: Michael Matthews
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803249438
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
In late nineteenth-century Mexico the Mexican populace was fascinated with the country’s booming railroad network. Newspapers and periodicals were filled with art, poetry, literature, and social commentaries exploring the symbolic power of the railroad. As a symbol of economic, political, and industrial modernization, the locomotive served to demarcate a nation’s status in the world. However, the dangers of locomotive travel, complicated by the fact that Mexico’s railroads were foreign owned and operated, meant that the railroad could also symbolize disorder, death, and foreign domination. In The Civilizing Machine Michael Matthews explores the ideological and cultural milieu that shaped the Mexican people’s understanding of technology. Intrinsically tied to the Porfiriato, the thirty-five-year dictatorship of Gen. Porfirio Díaz, the booming railroad network represented material progress in a country seeking its place in the modern world. Matthews discloses how the railroad’s development represented the crowning achievement of the regime and the material incarnation of its mantra, “order and progress.” The Porfirian administration evoked the railroad in legitimizing and justifying its own reign, while political opponents employed the same rhetorical themes embodied by the railroads to challenge the manner in which that regime achieved economic development and modernization. As Matthews illustrates, the multiple symbols of the locomotive reflected deepening social divisions and foreshadowed the conflicts that eventually brought about the Mexican Revolution.