Technology In America

Download or read book Technology in America written by Carroll Pursell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1990-04-12 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of essays focusing on the spread and elaboration of American technology, and on the men and women who shaped it. Beginning with technology of America's Wooden Age, the authors discuss Jefferson's perception of the role of technology in a democratic society; the American System of Manufactures of Eli Whitney and others; Thomas P. Jones and the institutionalization of industrialization in educational reforms; McCormick and the spread of industrialization to agriculture; and James Eads and the rise of transportation networks. ISBN 0-262-66049-0 (pbk.): $9.95.

Download or read book Technology in America written by Alan I. Marcus and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in a thoroughly updated new edition, this successful textbook surveys the history of technology in America from the 1600s to the 21st century. Alan I Marcus and Howard P. Segal explore the effect society, culture, politics and economics have had upon technological advances, and place the evolution of American technology within the broader context of the development of systems such as transportation and communications. This unique book connects phenomena such as colonial printing presses with the American Revolution; early photographs with the creation of an allegedly unique American character; and high-tech advances in biotechnology with a growing desire for individual autonomy. This is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of the history of technology, the history of science, and American history.

Download or read book America as Second Creation written by David E. Nye and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-09-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the dialogue that emerged after 1776 between different visions of what it meant to use new technologies to transform the land. After 1776, the former American colonies began to reimagine themselves as a unified, self-created community. Technologies had an important role in the resulting national narratives, and a few technologies assumed particular prominence. Among these were the axe, the mill, the canal, the railroad, and the irrigation dam. In this book David Nye explores the stories that clustered around these technologies. In doing so, he rediscovers an American story of origins, with America conceived as a second creation built in harmony with God's first creation. While mainstream Americans constructed technological foundation stories to explain their place in the New World, however, marginalized groups told other stories of destruction and loss. Native Americans protested the loss of their forests, fishermen resisted the construction of dams, and early environmentalists feared the exhaustionof resources. A water mill could be viewed as the kernel of a new community or as a new way to exploit labor. If passengers comprehended railways as part of a larger narrative about American expansion and progress, many farmers attacked railroad land grants. To explore these contradictions, Nye devotes alternating chapters to narratives of second creation and to narratives of those who rejected it.Nye draws on popular literature, speeches, advertisements, paintings, and many other media to create a history of American foundation stories. He shows how these stories were revised periodically, as social and economic conditions changed, without ever erasing the earlier stories entirely. The image of the isolated frontier family carving a homestead out of the wilderness with an axe persists to this day, alongside later images and narratives. In the book's conclusion, Nye considers the relation between these earlier stories and such later American developments as the conservation movement, narratives of environmental recovery, and the idealization of wilderness.

Download or read book America by Design written by David F. Noble and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-01-23 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed a “significant contribution” by The New York Times, David Noble’s book America by Design describes the factors that have shaped the history of scientific technology in the United States. Since the beginning, technology and industry have been undeniably intertwined, and Noble demonstrates how corporate capitalism has not only become the driving force behind the development of technology in this country but also how scientific research—particularly within universities—has been dominated by the corporations who fund it, who go so far as to influence the education of the engineers that will one day create the technology to be used for capitalist gain. Noble reveals that technology, often thought to be an independent science, has always been a means to an end for the men pulling the strings of Corporate America—and it was these men that laid down the plans for the design of the modern nation today.

Download or read book Accelerating the Globalization of America written by Catherine Mann and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-15 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information technology (IT) was key to the superior overall macroeconomic performance of the United States in the 1990s—high productivity, high growth, low inflation, and low unemployment. But IT also played a role in increasing earnings dispersion in the labor market—greatly rewarding workers with high education and skills. This US performance did not happen in a global vacuum. Globalization of US IT firms promoted deeper integration of IT throughout the US economy, which in turn promoted more extensive globalization in other sectors of the US economy and labor market. How will the increasingly globalized IT industry affect US long-term growth, intermediate macro performance, and disparities in the US labor market? What policies are needed to ensure that the United States remains first in innovation, business transformation, and education and skills, which are prerequisites for US economic leadership in the 21st century? This book traces the globalization of the IT industry, its diffusion into the US economy, and the prospects and implications of more extensive technology-enabled globalization of products and services.

Download or read book The U.S. Technology Skills Gap written by Gary J. Beach and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-07-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is a widening “skills gap” in science and math education threatening America’s future? That is the seminal question addressed in The U.S. Technology Skills Gap, a comprehensive 104-year review of math and science education in America. Some claim this “skills gap” is “equivalent to a permanent national recession” while others cite how the gap threatens America’s future economic, workforce employability and national security. This much is sure: America’s math and science skills gap is, or should be, an issue of concern for every business and information technology executive in the United States and The U.S Technology Skills Gap is the how-to-get involved guidebook for those executives laying out in a compelling chronologic format: The history of the science and math skills gap in America Explanation of why decades of astute warnings were ignored Inspiring examples of private company efforts to supplement public education A pragmatic 10-step action plan designed to solve the problem And a tantalizing theory of an obscure Japanese physicist that suggests America’s days as the global scientific leader are numbered Engaging and indispensable, The U.S. Technology Skills Gap is essential reading for those eager to see America remain a relevant global power in innovation and invention in the years ahead.

Download or read book American Technological Sublime written by David E. Nye and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996-02-28 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Technological Sublime continues the exploration of the social construction of technology that David Nye began in his award-winning book Electrifying America. Here Nye examines the continuing appeal of the "technological sublime" (a term coined by Perry Miller) as a key to the nation's history, using as examples the natural sites, architectural forms, and technological achievements that ordinary people have valued intensely. Technology has long played a central role in the formation of Americans' sense of selfhood. From the first canal systems through the moon landing, Americans have, for better or worse, derived unity from the common feeling of awe inspired by large-scale applications of technological prowess. American Technological Sublime continues the exploration of the social construction of technology that David Nye began in his award-winning book Electrifying America. Here Nye examines the continuing appeal of the "technological sublime" (a term coined by Perry Miller) as a key to the nation's history, using as examples the natural sites, architectural forms, and technological achievements that ordinary people have valued intensely. American Technological Sublime is a study of the politics of perception in industrial society. Arranged chronologically, it suggests that the sublime itself has a history - that sublime experiences are emotional configurations that emerge from new social and technological conditions, and that each new configuration to some extent undermines and displaces the older versions. After giving a short history of the sublime as an aesthetic category, Nye describes the reemergence and democratization of the concept in the early nineteenth century as an expression of the American sense of specialness. What has filled the American public with wonder, awe, even terror? David Nye selects the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the Erie Canal, the first transcontinental railroad, Eads Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, the major international expositions, the Hudson-Fulton Celebration of 1909, the Empire State Building, and Boulder Dam. He then looks at the atom bomb tests and the Apollo mission as examples of the increasing ambivalence of the technological sublime in the postwar world. The festivities surrounding the rededication of the Statue of Liberty in 1986 become a touchstone reflecting the transformation of the American experience of the sublime over two centuries. Nye concludes with a vision of the modern-day "consumer sublime" as manifested in the fantasy world of Las Vegas.