Our Technological Age, from the Inside Out
Name
project_muse_546872.pdf
Size
291.08 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
e1c2369039572c3d311084c6f4109abf
Author(s)
Williams, Rosalind H
Date Issued
April 2014
Journal
Technology and Culture
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press
Citation
Williams, Rosalind. “Our Technological Age, from the Inside Out.” Technology and Culture 55, 2 (April 2014): 461–476 © 2014 Society for the History of Technology
Version
Final published version
Abstract
generation ago, in the early 1990s, SHOT’s generous spirit of inclusion gave rise to a debate about contextualism that has never really reached a conclusion, and probably never should. It arose from the publication in 1988 of an edited volume titled In Context: History and the History of Technology—Essays in Honor of Melvin Kranzberg, edited by Stephen Cutcliffe and Robert Post and published upon Mel’s retirement by Lehigh University Press. Three years later, in 1991 (the wheels of the academy can turn slowly), my MIT colleague Leo Marx published a review of the book in the pages of Technology and Culture. At the end of the first paragraph, Leo rather disingenuously raised what he claimed to consider a simple question: What is the rationale for distinguishing the history of technology from history? More generally, what is the rationale for distinguishing specialized histories from general history?
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1353/TECH.2014.0047
