Cultural History of Technology

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Course Description

The subject of this course is the historical process by which the meaning of "technology" has been constructed. Although the word itself is traceable to the ancient Greek root teckhne (meaning art), it did not enter the English language until the 17th century, and did not acquire its current meaning until after World War I. The aim of the course, then, is to explore various sectors of industrializing 19th and 20th century Western society and culture with a view to explaining and assessing the emergence of technology as a pivotal word (and concept) in contemporary (especially Anglo-American) thought and expression.

Note: In the interests of freshness and topicality we regard the STS.464 syllabus as sufficiently flexible to permit some — mostly minor — variations from year to year. One example of a different STS.464 syllabus can be found in STS.464 Technology and the Literary Imagination, Spring 2008.

Level

Graduate

Instructors

  • Prof. Leo Marx
  • Prof. Rosalind Williams

Calendar

LEC # TOPICS

  • 1 What is "Technology" in the Contemporary World?
  • 2 The Context of Classical and Early Modern Philosophy
  • 3 The Enlightenment and the Belief in Progress
  • 4 The Romantic Reaction
  • 5 The Novel
  • 6 The Marxist Critique of Capitalism
  • 7 Culture: High v. Low; Traditional v. Democratic
  • 8 Systems and Networks
  • 9 Modernism: Socio-Economic and Aesthetic
  • 10 Engineering: Mentality, Vocation, Institution
  • 11 Ecological Crisis
  • 12 What Made "Technology" Necessary?

Readings

When you click the Amazon logo to the left of any citation and purchase the book (or other media) from Amazon.com, MIT OpenCourseWare will receive up to 10% of this purchase and any other purchases you make during that visit. This will not increase the cost of your purchase. Links provided are to the US Amazon site, but you can also support OCW through Amazon sites in other regions. Learn more. The table below lists the books for the course by session. In addition, given below is a bibliography of required readings and recommended readings.

Books Recommended for Purchase

  • Smith, Merritt Roe, and Gregory Clancey, eds. Major Problems in the History of American Technology. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. ISBN: 9780669354720. [S&C]
  • Scharff, Robert C., and Val Dusek. The Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition (An Anthology). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. ISBN: 9780631222194. [S&D]
  • Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. Riverside ed. Annotated, edited by E. Samuels. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. ISBN: 9780395166208. [EHA]
  • Whitehead, A. N. Science and the Modern World. Riverside, NJ: Simon & Schuster, 1997, chapters 1, 3, and 5. ISBN: 9780684836393. (Reprint)
Symbols used in Reading Assignments
  • [*] = Required reading for each topic
  • [**] = Primary reading for each topic
  • [H] = Handout or inclusion in class reader
  • All other readings are recommended.

LEC # TOPICS READINGS 1 What is "Technology" in the Contemporary World?

  • In-class reading: Excerpt from DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York, NY: Penguin, 1999, pp. 127-28. ISBN: 9780140283303.
  • In-class discussion and writing: What is "Technology"?

2 The Context of Classical and Early Modern Philosophy

  • [**] [S&C] "What is Technology?" pp. 1-25.
  • [**] [S&D] Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Kant, Rousseau. pp. ix-xi, and 1-60.
  • [*] Oxford English Dictionary: "Technology."
  • [*] [S&D] "Defining Technology." pp. 206-45.
  • [*] [S&C] Heilbroner, R. "Do Machines Make History?" pp. 398-404.
  • [S&D] Arendt, H. "The 'Vita Activa' and the Modern Age." pp. 352-68.
  • Heim, M. The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality.
  • Jonas, H. Toward a Philosophy of Technology.
  • [S&D] Mumford, L. "Tool-Users vs Homo Sapiens," and "The Megamachine." pp. 344-50.

3 The Enlightenment and the Belief in Progress

  • [**] [EHA] Adams, Henry. Chapters 1, 2, and 3.
  • [**] [S&D] Kant, and J. J. Rousseau. pp. 60-66.
  • [**] [S&C] Jefferson, Hamilton. "Debate over Manufactures." pp. 103-143.
  • Adas, M. Machines as the Measure of Men.
  • [S&D] Habermas, J. "Technical Progress and the Social Life-World." pp. 530-6.
  • [H] Hobsbawm, E. "The Industrial Revolution."
  • Horkheimer, and Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment.
  • Jefferson, T. Notes on the State of Virginia.
  • Kasson, J. "The Emergence of Republican Technology." In Civilizing the Machine.
  • Marx, L. Machine in the Garden. pp. 145-180.
  • Marx, L., and B. Mazlish, eds. Progress: Fact or Illusion?
  • Merchant, C. The Death of Nature.
  • Polanyi, K. The Great Transformation.

4 The Romantic Reaction

  • [**] [H] Debate: Carlyle, T. "Spirit of the Age." and reply by Walker, T. "Defense of Mechanical Philosophy."
  • [*] Whitehead, A. N. Science and the Modern World. Riverside, NJ: Simon & Schuster, 1997, pp.1-164. ISBN: 9780684836393. (Reprint)
  • Abrams, M. The Mirror and the Lamp.
  • [H] Coleridge, S. T. "Mechanic vs Organic Form."
  • Emerson, R. W. "Works and Days." In Society and Solitude.
  • Melville, H. "The Try-Works." Chapter 96 in Moby-Dick.
  • Marx. Machine in the Garden.
  • Nye, D. American Technological Sublime.
  • [H] Peckham, M. "Toward a Theory of Romanticism."
  • Thoreau, H. D. "Sounds." Chapter IV in Walden.
  • Wordsworth, W. "Tintern Abbey," and Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

5 The Novel

  • [**] Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Norton critical ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000. ISBN: 9780393975604. (Documents on Dickens and Industrialization)
  • Melville, H. "The Paradise of Bachelors," and "The Tartarus of Maids."
  • Norris, F. The Octopus.
  • Sinclair, U. The Jungle.
  • Verne, J. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
  • Watt, I. The Rise of the Novel.
  • Passos, J. Dos. Manhattan Transfer USA.
  • Dreiser, T. Sister Carrie.

Williams, R. The City and the Country. 6 The Marxist Critique of Capitalism

  • [**] [S&D] Marx, and Engels. "Capitalism and the Modern Labor Process." pp. 66-80.
  • [**] Marx, K. "Communist Manifesto, and 1844 mss," Preface to "A Critique of Political Economy." In Marx-Engel Reader.
  • Berman, M. All that is Solid Melts into Air.
  • Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity.
  • Hobsbawm, E. The Age of Revolution.
  • Marcuse, H. Eros and Civilization.
  • Williams, R. Marxism and Literature. pp. 75-144.

7 Culture: High v. Low; Traditional v. Democratic

  • [**] Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. Whitefish, MT: Kessigner Publishing Company, 2004. ISBN: 1419214683. (Reprint) (selections)
  • [**] Whitman, Walt. "Passage to India," and "To A Locomotive in Winter." In Leaves of Grass. New York, NY: Penguin, 2005. ISBN: 9780143039273. (Reprint)
  • [**] ———. "Democratic Vistas." In Democratic Vistas and Other Papers. Miami, FL: Fredonia Books, 2002. ISBN: 9781410100665. (Reprint)
  • [*] Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1789-1950. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1983. ISBN: 9780231057011.
  • Carlyle, T. "Signs of the Times," and Sartor Resartus.
  • Eagleton, T. "The Rise of Literature." In Literary Criticism.
  • Emerson, R. W. "The American Scholar," and "The Young American."
  • Freud, S. Civilization and its Discontents.
  • Hughes, T. Human-Built World.
  • Trachtenberg, A. The Incorporation of America.
  • Weber, M. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
  • Williams, Rosalind. Notes on the Underground.

8 Systems and Networks

  • [**] Hughes, T. P. "The Evolution of Large Technological Systems." In The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780262022620.
  • [**] ———. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780801846144.
  • [**] Castells, M. The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000, pp. 1-76. ISBN: 9780631221401.
  • [*] Chandler, A. Chapters 1-5 in The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780674940529.
  • [*] Trachtenberg, A. The Incorporation of America. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1982, pp. 38-69. ISBN: 9780809001453
  • Akin, W. Technocracy and the American Dream, The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941.
  • [H] Mindell, D. "Bodies, Ideas, and Dynamics."
  • Hughes, T. American Genesis.
  • Nye, D. Electrifying America.

9 Modernism: Socio-Economic and Aesthetic

  • [**] Adams, Henry. Chapters 19-35 in The Education of Henry Adams. Riverside ed. Annotated, edited by E. Samuels. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. ISBN: 9780395166208.
  • [*] Marinetti, et. al. Four Futurist Manifestoes.
  • [*] Shapiro, M. "The Armory Show," and "Nature of Abstract Art." In Modern Art, 19th and 20th Centuries Selected Papers. New York, NY: George Braziller, 1978. ISBN: 9780807608999.
  • Clark, T. J. The Painting of Modern Life.
  • Benjamin, W. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."
  • Giddens, A. The Consequences of Modernity.
  • Giedion, S. Mechanization Takes Command.
  • Greenberg, C. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," and "The Plight of Culture." In Art and Culture.
  • Harvey, D. The Condition of Postmodernity.
  • Hughes, R. The Shock of the New.
  • Kern, S. The Culture of Space and Time.

10 Engineering: Mentality, Vocation, Institution

  • [*] Noble, David. America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977, Foreward, Introduction, and chapters 1-4, pp. xi-xxvi, and 3-65. ISBN: 9780394499833.
  • [*] [S&C] Taylor, F. W. "Scientific Management." pp. 269-288.
  • [**] Veblen, Thorstein. The Engineers and the Price System. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing Company, 2004. ISBN: 1419260960. (Reprint)
  • [**] ———. "The Machine Process." In The Theory of Business Enterprise. Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1978. ISBN: 9780878556991. (Reprint)
  • Aitken, H. Scientific Management in Action: Taylorism at Watertown Arsenal.
  • Layton, E. E. The Revolt of the Engineers.
  • Oldenziel, R. "Unsettled Discourses." In Making Technology Masculine. pp. 19-50.
  • Schatzberg, E. "The Concept of Technology." ms. to be published in T&C.
  • Smith, M. R. Harper's Ferry Armory and the New Technology.

11 Ecological Crisis

  • [**] Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1984. ISBN: 9780553247923.
  • [**] [H] White, L. "The Historical Roots of the Ecological Crisis."
  • Carson, R. Silent Spring.
  • Freud, S. Civilization and Its Discontents.
  • Harrison, R. P. Forests, the Shadow of Civilization.
  • Marsh, J. P. Man and Nature.
  • McKibben, W. The End of Nature.
  • Mumford, L. Chapters 1-2, and 14-18 in The City in History.
  • Cronon, W. Nature's Metropolis.
  • Davis, M. City of Quartz.

12 What Made "Technology" Necessary? [**] DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York, NY: Penguin, 1999. ISBN: 9780140283303.

Bibliography for Required Readings

  • Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. Riverside ed. Annotated, edited by E. Samuels. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. ISBN: 9780395166208.
  • Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. Whitefish, MT: Kessigner Publishing Company, 2004. ISBN: 1419214683. (Reprint)
  • Arnold, Matthew. "Dover Beach."
  • Cronon, William. "The Trouble with Wilderness, or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature."
  • DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York, NY: Penguin, 1999. ISBN: 9780140283303.
  • Dickens, Charles. Hard Times, Norton Critical Edition. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000. ISBN: 9780393975604.
  • Heilbroner, Robert L. "Do Machines Make History?" In Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. Edited by Merritt Roe Smith, and Leo Marx. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994, pp. 53-65. ISBN: 9780262691673.
  • Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1984. ISBN: 9780553247923.
  • Hughes, Thomas P. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, p. 197. ISBN: 9780801846144.
  • ———. "The Evolution of Large Technological Systems." In The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780262022620.
  • Kateb, George. "Technology and Philosophy." Social Research 64, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 1225-1246.
  • Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Idea in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780195133516.
  • Menand, Louis. "Gross Points: Is the blockbuster the end of cinema?" The New Yorker (February 7, 2005): 82-87.
  • Mindell, David. "Bodies, Ideas, and Dynamics: Historical Perspectives on Systems Thinking in Engineering." Massachusetts Institute of Technology Engineering Systems Division Working Paper Series, ESD-WP-2003-01.23, ESD Internal Symposium, May 2002. (PDF)
  • Noble, David. America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977, Foreward, Introduction, and chapters 1-4. ISBN: 9780394499833.
  • Peckham, Morse. "Toward a Theory of Romanticism." Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 66, no. 2 (March, 1951): 5-23.
  • Rosen, Jonathan. "The Woodpecker In All of Us." The New York Times (May 3, 2005): A25, col. 1.
  • Scharff, Robert C., and Val Dusek. The Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition (An Anthology). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. ISBN: 9780631222194.
  • Smith, Merritt Roe, and Gregory Clancey, eds. Major Problems in the History of American Technology. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997. ISBN: 9780669354720.
  • Thoreau, Henry David. "Sounds." In Walden. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780691096124. (Reprint)
  • Veblen, Thorstein. The Engineers and the Price System. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing Company, 2004. ISBN: 1419260960. (Reprint)
  • ———. The Theory of Business Enterprise. Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1978, chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780878556991. (Reprint)
  • White, Lynn Jr. "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis." Science 155, no. 3767 (March 10, 1967): 1203-1207.
  • Whitehead, A. N. Science and the Modern World. Riverside, NJ: Simon & Schuster, 1997, chapters 1, 3, and 5. ISBN: 9780684836393. (Reprint)
  • Whitman, Walt. "Democratic Vistas." In Democratic Vistas and Other Papers. Miami, FL: Fredonia Books, 2002. ISBN: 9781410100665. (Reprint)
  • ———. "Passage to India," and "To A Locomotive in Winter." In Leaves of Grass. New York, NY: Penguin, 2005. ISBN: 9780143039273. (Reprint)
  • Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1789-1950. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1983. ISBN: 9780231057011.
  • Williams, Rosalind. "Afterword: an historian's view on the network society." In The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective. Edited by Castells, Manuel. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2005, pp. 432-448. ISBN: 9781845424350.

Bibliography for Recommended Readings

  • Abrams, M. The Mirror and the Lamp. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1971. ISBN: 9780195014716.
  • Adas, M. Machines as the Measure of Men. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780801497605.
  • Aitken, H. Scientific Management in Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780691042411.
  • Akin, W. Technocracy and the American Dream. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977. ISBN: 9780520031104.
  • Benjamin, W. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Illuminations. New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1969. ISBN: 9780805202410.
  • Berman, M. All That is Solid Melts into Air. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 1988. ISBN: 9780140109627.
  • Carlyle, T. "Signs of the Times." A Carlyle Reader. Acton, MA: Copley Publishing Group, 2000. ISBN: 9781583900086.
  • Carlyle, T. Sartor Resartus. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780192836731.
  • Carson, R. Silent Spring. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002. ISBN: 9780618249060.
  • Clark, T. J. The Painting of Modern Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780691009032.
  • Cronon, W. Nature's Metropolis. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992. ISBN: 9780393308730.
  • Davis, M. City of Quartz. New York, NY: Random House, 1992. ISBN: 9780679738060.
  • Dos Passos, J. Manhattan Transfer. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. ISBN: 9780618381869.
  • Dreiser, T. Sister Carrie. New York, NY: Dover Publications, 2004. ISBN: 9780486434681.
  • Eagleton, T. "The Rise of Literature." In Marxism and Literary Criticism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976. ISBN: 9780520032439.
  • Emerson, R. W. "The American Scholar," and "The Young American." Full-text online .
  • Emerson, R. W. "Works and Days." In Society and Solitude. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Fredonia Books, 2001. ISBN: 9781589634626.
  • Freud, S. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989. ISBN: 9780393301588.
  • Giddens, A. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780804718912.
  • Giedion, S. Mechanization Takes Command. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1969. ISBN: 9780393004892.
  • Greenberg, C. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," and "The Plight of Culture." In Art and Culture. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971. ISBN: 9780807066812.
  • Harrison, R. P. Forests: the Shadow of Civilization. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780226318073.
  • Harvey, D. The Condition of Postmodernity. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. ISBN: 9780631162940.
  • Heim, M. The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780195092585.
  • Hobsbawm, E. The Age of Revolution. New York, NY: Random House, 1996. ISBN: 9780679772538.
  • Horkheimer, and Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780804736336.
  • Hughes, R. The Shock of the New. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1990. ISBN: 9780070311275.
  • Hughes, T. American Genesis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780226359274.
  • Hughes, T. Human-Built World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780226359342.
  • Jefferson, T. Notes on the State of Virginia. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 1998. ISBN: 9780140436679.
  • Jonas, H. "Toward a Philosophy of Technology." In Philosophy of Technology. Edited by R. Scharff and V. Dusek. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003, pp.191-204. ISBN: 9780631222194.
  • Kasson, J. "The Emergence of Republican Technology." In Civilizing the Machine . New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1999. ISBN: 9780809016204.
  • Kern, S, ed. The Culture of Space and Time. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780674021693.
  • Layton, E. E. The Revolt of the Engineers. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780801832871.
  • Marcuse, H. Eros and Civilization. Malden, MA: Beacon Press, 1974. ISBN: 9780807015551.
  • Marsh, G. P. Man and Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. ISBN: 9780674544529.
  • Marx, L. Machine in the Garden. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 145-180. ISBN: 9780195133516.
  • Marx, L., and B. Mazlish, eds. Progress: Fact or Illusion? Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780472106769.
  • McKibben, B. The End of Nature. New York, NY: Knopf Publishing Group, 1997. ISBN: 9780385416047.
  • Melville, H. "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids." In The Encantadas and Other Stories. New York, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. ISBN: 9780486440842.
  • Melville, H. "The Try-Works." Chapter 96 in Moby-Dick. New York, NY: Dover Publications, 2003. ISBN: 9780486432151.
  • Merchant, C. The Death of Nature. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990. ISBN: 9780062505958.
  • Mumford, L. Chapters 1-2, and 14-18 in The City in History. San Diego, CA: Harvest Books, 1968. ISBN: 9780156180351.
  • Norris, F. The Octopus. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 1994. ISBN: 9780140187700.
  • Nye, D. American Technological Sublime . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780262640343.
  • Nye, D. Electrifying America . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780262640305.
  • Oldenziel, R. "Unsettled Discourses." In Making Technology Masculine. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 2004, pp. 19-50. ISBN: 9789053563816.
  • Polanyi, K. The Great Transformation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780807056431.
  • Schatzberg, E. "The Concept of Technology." Forthcoming.
  • Sinclair, U. The Jungle. New York, NY: Dover Publications, 2001. ISBN: 9780486419237.
  • Smith, M. R. Harper's Ferry Armory and the New Technology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980. ISBN: 9780801491818.
  • Thoreau, H. D. "Sounds." Chapter IV in Walden. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780807014257.
  • Trachtenberg, A. The Incorporation of America. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1982. ISBN: 9780809001453.
  • Verne, J. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Riverside, NJ: Simon & Schuster, 2005. ISBN: 9781416500209.
  • Watt, I. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780520230699.
  • Weber, M. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York, NY: Dover Publications, 2003. ISBN: 9780486427034.
  • Williams, R. Marxism and Literature. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1978, pp. 75-144. ISBN: 9780198760610.
  • Williams, R. The Country and the City. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1975. ISBN: 9780195198102.
  • Williams, R. Notes on the Underground . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780262730983.
  • Wordsworth, W. "Tintern Abbey" and Preface to Lyrical Ballads . New York, NY: Routledge, 1991. ISBN: 9780415063883.

Assignments

The work for the course consists of a brief (750-1500 word) paper interpreting the significance of each week's assigned reading in illuminating the process by which "technology" - the word, the concept - has been constructed. Each student also will write a longer final paper summing up his or her conclusions about the character of the process, and the meaning and value of "technology" - the word, the concept. Students in effect will be writing the final paper as they proceed, week by week, keeping track of the cumulative effect of each session on their personal effort to enlarge, refine, and sharpen their sense of the historical development of the concept of technology. The weekly papers will provide a sort of running journal of thoughts on this subject; the final paper will reorder, collate, and summarize this ongoing work.

Seminar Discussions

LEC # TOPICS

  • 1 What is "Technology" in the Contemporary World? (PDF)
  • 2 The Context of Classical and Early Modern Philosophy (PDF)
  • 3 The Enlightenment and the Belief in Progress (PDF)
  • 4 The Romantic Reaction
  • 5 The Novel (PDF)
  • 6 The Marxist Critique of Capitalism (PDF)
  • 7 Culture: High v. Low; Traditional v. Democratic (PDF)
  • 8 Systems and Networks (PDF)
  • 9 Modernism: Socio-Economic and Aesthetic (PDF)
  • 10 Engineering: Mentality, Vocation, Institution (PDF)
  • 11 Ecological Crisis (PDF)
  • 12 What Made "Technology" Necessary? (PDF)

Course Listing

Cultural History of Technology

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