Research Catalog

Title

Technics and civilization / by Lewis Mumford ; with a new foreword by Langdon Winner.

Author

Mumford, Lewis, 1895-1990

Publication

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Winner, Langdon

Description

xxvii, 495 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

"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.

Subjects

• History
• Industrial arts > History
• Technology and civilization

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Cultural preparation -- Agents of mechanization -- The eotechnic phase -- The Paleotechnic phase -- The Neotechnic phase -- Compensations and reversions -- Assimilation of the machine -- Orientation.

ISBN

• 9780226550275 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 0226550273 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2010018373

OCLC

• 610466991
• SCSB-12182626

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library