Technology Matters: Questions to Live With [Paperback]

David E. Nye (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262640678 | ISBN-13: 978-0262640671 | Publication Date: August 24, 2007

Technology matters, writes David Nye, because it is inseparable from being human. We have used tools for more than 100,000 years, and their central purpose has not always been to provide necessities. People excel at using old tools to solve new problems and at inventing new tools for more elegant solutions to old tasks. Perhaps this is because we are intimate with devices and machines from an early age--as children, we play with technological toys: trucks, cars, stoves, telephones, model railroads, Playstations. Through these machines we imagine ourselves into a creative relationship with the world. As adults, we retain this technological playfulness with gadgets and appliances--Blackberries, cell phones, GPS navigation systems in our cars.We use technology to shape our world, yet we think little about the choices we are making. In Technology Matters, Nye tackles ten central questions about our relationship to technology, integrating a half-century of ideas about technology into ten cogent and concise chapters, with wide-ranging historical examples from many societies. He asks: Can we define technology? Does technology shape us, or do we shape it? Is technology inevitable or unpredictable? (Why do experts often fail to get it right?)? How do historians understand it? Are we using modern technology to create cultural uniformity, or diversity? To create abundance, or an ecological crisis? To destroy jobs or create new opportunities? Should "the market" choose our technologies? Do advanced technologies make us more secure, or escalate dangers? Does ubiquitous technology expand our mental horizons, or encapsulate us in artifice?These large questions may have no final answers yet, but we need to wrestle with them--to live them, so that we may, as Rilke puts it, "live along some distant day into the answers."

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Technology can seem like an implacable force that gathers power as it advances and abruptly transforms society. But Nye, a scholar who carefully studies the symbiotic relationship between humankind and its tools, observes that creating tools and technologies has always been intrinsic to being human, and that while it seems as though we're being controlled by technology, we are in fact making choices about which technologies we embrace and how we use them. In an accessible narrative spiked with clarion examples and nimble interpretations, Nye poses a series of leading questions that guide readers to a more accurate perception of the unintended, unpredictable, and serendipitous evolution and impact of technology. How does technology influence how we interact with nature, how we care for ourselves, and how we learn and work? Are our technologies improving our lives or limiting our horizons and endangering our very existence? The issues pertaining to the role of technology on earth are complex and ever more urgent, and Nye provides an invaluably methodical and provocative primer. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Applying the lessons of history to modern-day dilemmas, Nye defies much common wisdom about the power of technology in society. With irony and wit, he exhorts us not to succumb to defeatist notions of technological determinism but to take charge of our own human destinies."--Arthur Molella, Director, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, Smithsonian Institution

"Provocative.... Nye's mission in this anecdote-rich, briskly analytical, and indignation-arousing overview is to make us think more critically about the boons and banes of technology and make our views known." Donna Seaman Speakeasy

"A deeply informed historian who writes with impressive clarity, David Nye persuades us in Technology Matters that we should ask the kind of life-shaping questions about technology that we customarily pose about politics and economics. He does not finally answer the timely questions that he explicates, but provokes us to search for our own answers." Thomas P. Hughes , author of Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture

" Technology Matters provides a scintillating and sweeping assessment of how technology and culture have shaped one another over time and how humanity"s future will be shaped by the choices we make today. Nye"s latest analysis of the reciprocal interplay of technology and culture extends his more academic work to a broader audience and does so in a clear and engaging manner." Jeffrey K. Stine , National Museum of American History

"Nye's book addresses many of the issues and debates surrounding our highly textured technological society, and these are reflected in the questions he asks. Does technology control us? Does it lead to cultural uniformity or diversity? To sustainable abundance or to ecological crisis? To more security or escalating danger? The book is rich in examples, is easily readable and is short enough to be recommended for a day's read." Nature

"The incessant march of technology's evolution is the subject of David Nye's very readable book. It is written in the form of questions and expansive answers, with read like a primer (if not a discursive catechism) on what historians of technology have been thinking about over the half-century or so since their field was formalized. One of the striking effects of Nye's treatment is that it leads the reader to the incontrovertible conclusion that the answers to questions about technology evolve no less than technology itself. This is hardly surprising: thinking and writing about technology can be as creative a pursuit as inventing." New Scientist

"*Technology Matters* provides a scintillating and sweeping assessment of how technology and culture have shaped one another over time and how humanity's future will be shaped by the choices we make today. Nye's latest analysis of the reciprocal interplay of technology and culture extends his more academic work to a broader audience and does so in a clear and engaging manner."--Jeffrey K. Stine, National Museum of American History

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (August 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262640678
• ISBN-13: 978-0262640671
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #61,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David E. Nye's publications focus on technology and American society. He was born in Boston, and educated at Amherst College and the University of Minnesota. He has taught in both the United States and Europe, and he has lectured in every western European country. Author or editor of 20 books, he has won grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Leverhulme Foundation, and national research councils in Denmark and Holland. He has appeared on NOVA, the BBC, and Danish television, and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge, Leeds, Harvard, MIT, Warwick, Oviedo, and Notre Dame. In 2005 he received the Leonardo da Vinci Medal, the lifetime achievement award and highest honor of the Society for the History of Technoloy.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The wisdom to examine a technology before adopting it is a great one and Nye has a lot of it, May 27, 2008

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Technology Matters: Questions to Live With (Paperback)

The title is one that will often elicit the response, "Well Duuuuh!", yet that should not be said with any great emphasis, for the content backs it up. Nye points out that if a society can be insular or universal it is possible for technological progress to be reversed.
He cites the example of Japan, which rejected guns and contact with Western nations. The warrior class "forgot" the knowledge of how to make and use guns in favor of the more pure weapons of swords and the other Samurai tools of battle. However, once the American Commodore Perry sailed into Japanese waters to "convince" the Japanese leadership to open up the country, they understood that the days of isolation were over.
The other example noted is that of Amish communities in the United States. These groups selectively filter new technologies, incorporating only the items that they believe will not dramatically alter their society.
However, these two examples are very much the exception through human history. The Japanese islands remained free only because the western powers made no attempt to control them. It was the only country in Asia that was not made either a direct or de-facto colony of a Western nation in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Amish maintain their insular culture only because they are part of a society that provides them the legal and social protection to do so.
The global nature of the world has changed the situation; it is now possible for potential new technologies to be introduced slowly or not at all. Given the successes in cloning mammals, it is nearly certain that humans could be cloned. Yet, there appears to be universal agreement to delay or even ban the technology. Several nations possess the technical ability to build nuclear weapons but have decided that it is in their best interests not to do so.
Nye also goes into a great deal of detail over the rise of new technologies and how many were slow to catch the attention of the masses. However, once the new technologies were adopted by large numbers of people, they caused dramatic change in society. The telegraph, telephone and the gasoline automobile were three items that many saw no need for when first introduced but are now staples of the world.
Nearly all technologies have negative consequences and some have been introduced without a complete examination of the alternatives. The nuclear power plants built in the sixties and seventies are an example. I can recall the arguments made at that time in favor of these plants stating that the breeder reactors would create more fuel than they consume. Since then the problem has become what to do with this "waste" that will remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.
The advance of technology is a very complex issue that needs to be met and analyzed in detail before it should be allowed to progress. Nye examines all of the issues surrounding technology introduction and develops an analysis of the problems that provide a glimmer of hope that the future is bright and not hopeless.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad for what it is, October 11, 2009

By 

A. Pickett (Warren, MI, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Technology Matters: Questions to Live With (Paperback)

I bought this as a required text for a course. But I have to say, Nye's commentary is so much better than that of my professor! It opened my eyes to politics, history, sociology, and psychology as much as it did to technology.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely Questions To Think Hard About, December 31, 2007

By 

T. Woodard (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Technology Matters: Questions to Live With (Hardcover)

This book outlines a brief history of technology and the social uses of each innovation. The interaction between technology and society cannot be ignored, which is a great consideration in this great monograph. Easily something to consider for the rest of your life.