Innovation's Role Is Sorely Exaggerated

Strudelkugel writes "The New Yorker has a book review describing our common misunderstanding of the value of technology and its ultimate uses. The reviewer notes that the way we think about technology tends to ignore older objects of technology. Quoting: '[W]hen we do consider technology in historical terms we customarily see it as a driving force of progress: every so often... an innovation — the steam engine, electricity, computers — brings a new age into being. In "The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900", by David Edgerton, a well-known British historian of modern military and industrial technology, offers a vigorous assault on this narrative. He thinks that traditional ways of understanding technology, technological change, and the role of technology in our lives, have been severely distorted by what he calls "the innovation-centric account" of technology.'" Money quote: "Seen in this light, my kitchen is a technological palimpsest."

Comments

I wonder

[homey of my owney]

I wonder how he wrote his tome. Seems like that quill got plenty of use.

a technological palimpsest?

[192939495969798999]

you scrape off and reuse all the appliances in your kitchen for something else than their original purpose? Hmmm... reminds me of the classic quote: "I don't think that means what you think it means."

Re:It's an American Thing

[drinkypoo]

From the oh-so-black-humor department: I'm pretty sure more Japanese know who invented the first H-Bomb than know who invented the first machine gun, too.

ooh I think you're talking smack about ME

[nomadic]

He's a historian; he's looking at the actual historical effects of what have previously been regarded as incredible innovations, and finding in the grand scheme of things those specific inventions they haven't really been as important as most people think. It's not an anti-technology

Seriously, this sort of story stinks of sour grapes. Most of the arty-farty crowd can barely pay their rent, and they've long envied the successes of the technical sector.

Actually all those arty-farty subjects came in real handy in law school, so don't worry, I'm doing just fine rent-wise.

Even back in school, while those of us who were able were studying differential equations and calculus (and the arty were saying things like "math is hard")

You know, my first job was as a sysadmin and I never had to do any differential equations or calculus. Don't think any of my programmer friends had to either.

it was that way. Try telling some lit major about your new file server, see how interested he is in it. Good luck; you'll be lucky if he or she sticks around for more than five minutes.

There isn't anyone on the planet who would stick around for more than five minutes to hear about your file server, technical sector or not. And if you're telling a "she" about your file server, you really have to work on your pickup skills...

Re:I don't take advice about technology from write

[cpt kangarooski]

most of them have a bust of Shakespeare hidden somewhere about their apartment

Well, they need some sort of way to open the hidden door to their secret lairs.