Cultures of technology and the quest for innovation
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Cultures of technology and the quest for innovation
(Making sense of history, v. 9)
Berghahn Books, 2006
- : pbk
Available at 4 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Underlying the current dynamics of technological developments, their divergence or convergence and the abundance of options, promises and risks they contain, is the quest for innovation, the contributors to this volume argue. The seemingly insatiable demand for novelty coincides with the rise of modern science and the onset of modernity in Western societies. Never before has the Baconian dream been so close to becoming reality: wrapped into a globalizing capitalism that seeks ever expanding markets for new products, artifacts and designs and new processes that lead to gains in efficiency, productivity and profit. However, approaching these developments through a wider historical and cultural perspectives, means to raise questions about the plurality of cultures, the interaction between "hardware" and "software" and about the nature of the interfaces where technology meets with economic, social, legal, historical constraints and opportunities. The authors come to the conclusion that inside a seemingly homogenous package and a seemingly universal quest for innovation many differences remain.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Quest for Innovation and Cultures of Technology
Helga Nowotny
PART I: ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION
Chapter 1. Culture and Innovation
Thomas P. Hughes
Chapter 2. The Unintended Consequences of Innovation: Change and Community at MIT
Rosalind Williams
Chapter 3. The Vulnerability of Technological Culture
Wiebe E. Bijker
PART II: THE GENDER BIAS OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS
Chapter 4. Culture of Gender, and Culture of Technology: The Gendering of Things in France's Office Spaces between 1890 and 1930
Delphine Gardey
Chapter 5. Suspending Gender? Reflecting on Innovations in Cyberspace
Judy Wajcman
PART III: PLURALIST HISTORIES OF SCIENCE, INNOVATION, AND WAR
Chapter 6. Innovation, Diverse Knowledges, and the Presumed Singularity of Science
John V. Pickstone
Chapter 7. Scientists on the Battlefield: Cultures and Conflicts
Jean-Jacques Salomon
PART IV: THE ADOPTION OF INNOVATIONS IN DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXTS
Chapter 8. From Prophecies of the Future to Incarnations of the Past: Cultures of Nuclear Technology
Patrick Kupper
Chapter 9. The Mining Industry in Traditional China: Intraand Intercultural Comparisons
Hans Ulrich Vogel
Epilogue: Interdisciplinarity and the Innovation Process How to Organize Spaces of Translation, or, the Politics of Innovation
Joachim Nettelbeck
Contributors
Select Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"