Really looking forward to the publication of the The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900 by David Edgerton, Hans Rausing Professor of History of Science and Technology, Imperial College. Hmmm.. wikipedia only has an entry for David Edgerton the Burger King franchise founder..
There’s a Demos event entitled Shock of the Old” to launch it next wednesday at their Tooley St HQ in London. From the description:
Standard histories of technology give accounts of when things were invented. Edgerton concentrates on what people actually use. So instead of the usual timeline of inventions we are faced with a patchwork of global use: rickshaws and bicycles alongside hybrid cars and aeroplanes; stealth bombers in a struggle against suicide bombers. The world we live in today is as reliant on corrugated iron and furniture as it is on the Pill and the supercomputer.
More interesting food for thought in relation to measures. Hmm.. getting closer to the post on design thinking and metrics and it’s wider applicability and benefits.
Great site for Demos developed by Headshift who I spent much of last summer working with.
Jim
I really liked Brian Winston’s “Media Technology and Society – A History from the Telegraph to the Internet”. While I have never found the time to read it from cover to cover (it’s pretty thick!) even picking it up and reading one section at a time is great fun.
His view is that new media (from the telegraph onwards is “the product of a constant play-off between social necessity and supression”. Some real insight into the reality of the lives of the “inventors” too – although I am not sure his model really includes inventors as they are normally thought about!
Pete