TY  - BOOK
AU  - Hughes,Thomas Parke
TI  - Human-built world: how to think about technology and culture 
T2  - Science.culture
SN  - 0226359336
AV  - T14.5 .H84 2004
U1  - 303.483 22
PY  - 2004///
CY  - Chicago
PB  - University of Chicago Press
KW  - Technology
KW  - Social aspects
KW  - United States
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-203) and index; 1; Introduction : complex technology --; 2; Technology and the second creation --; 3; Technology as machine --; 4; Technology as systems, controls, and information --; 5; Technology and culture --; 6; Creating an ecotechnological environment
N2  - "In Human-Built World, Thomas Hughes chronicles the ideas about technology expressed by influential Western thinkers who not only understood its multifaceted character but who also explored its creative potential. Hughes draws on range of literature, art, and architecture to illuminate what technology has brought to society and culture, and to explain how we might begin to develop an "ecotechnology" that works with, not against, ecological systems." "From the "Creator" model of development of the sixteenth century to the "big science" of the 1940s and 1950s to the architecture of Frank Gehry, Hughes charts the myriad ways that technology has been woven into the social and cultural fabric of different eras and the promises and problems it has offered. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, optimistically hoped that technology could be combined with nature to create an Edenic environment; Lewis Mumford, two centuries later, warned of the increasing mechanization of American life." "Such divergent views, Hughes shows, have existed side by side, demonstrating the fundamental idea that "in its variety, technology is full of contradictions, laden with human folly, saved by occasional benign deeds, and rich with unintended consequences." In Human-Built World, he offers the history of these contradictions, follies, and consequences, a history that resurrects technology, rightfully, as more than gadgetry; it is in fact no less than an embodiment of human values."--BOOK JACKET
UR  - http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/uchi051/2003018426.html
ER  -