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Culture's Engine offers an insightful and penetrating analysis of the enduring relationship between technology and society. William Gosling explores in absorbing historical detail how humans have experienced change through a sequence of technological revolutions, each giving rise to new social organisation, which in turn influences the shape and timing of the next such revolution. Gosling argues that it is through this dialogue that successful technology sets the direction and pace of all cultural evolution. The state of technology at any time is the major influence on the world, and not just the material world. This book then is not a history of technology, still less of science. It fundamentally questions how technology and social forces interact, leading to these successive revolutions and their outcomes.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. The odd couple.- 3. Why are humans different.- 4. Three flavours of technology.- 5. Subtle subversives.- 6. The active elements appear.- 7. Drivers of technology.- 8. Technology's other half.- 9. Talk the talk.- 10. Patterns of innovation.- 11. Invention push and market pull.- 12. Deep design.- 13. A hazardous business.- 14. Will anyone want it?.- 15. Failure foreseen.- 16. Can machines think?.- 17. Lady Lovelace's revenge.- 18. The dark side.- 19. Be careful what you wish for.- 20. Past, present, future.- 21. Technology and dreaming
About the author
William Gosling, a British engineer, has spent half his working life as an academic, holding professorial appointments at Swansea and then Bath, where mobile communication was his passion. The other half was in industry, where he ended as a Director and chief technical officer of an electronics company with a ten-figure annual turnover. He is also a Past-president of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
