Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 150.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 10:07:36 +0100
From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi
<tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Subject: A Historian Confronts Technological Change
A new publication from MIT might interest to humanist scholars,
"Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change" by Rosalind
Williams (August 2002, ISBN 0-262-23223-5, MIT Press)
When Warren Kendall Lewis left Spring Garden Farm in Delaware in 1901 to
enter MIT, he had no idea that he was becoming part of a profession that
would bring untold good to his country but would also contribute to the
death of his family's farm. In this book written a century later,
Professor Lewis's granddaughter, a cultural historian who has served in
the administration of MIT, uses her grandfather's and her own experience
to make sense of the rapidly changing role of technology in contemporary
life.
Rosalind Williams served as Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education
at MIT from 1995 through 2000. From this vantage point, she watched a wave
of changes, some planned and some unexpected, transform many aspects of
social and working life--from how students are taught to how research and
accounting are done--at this major site of technological innovation. In
Retooling, she uses this local knowledge to draw more general insights
into contemporary society's obsession with technology.
Today technology-driven change defines human desires, anxieties, memories,
imagination, and experiences of time and space in unprecedented ways. But
technology, and specifically information technology, does not simply
influence culture and society; it is itself inherently cultural and
social. If there is to be any reconciliation between technological change
and community, Williams argues, it will come from connecting technological
and social innovation--a connection demonstrated in the history that
unfolds in this absorbing book.
More details about the book is available at
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=3B6A77A9-DC28-49A8-8AD2-C9CCB82B1A54&ttype=2&tid=8993>
Best regards,
Arun Tripathi
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 10 2002 - 05:30:57 EDT