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David E. Nye

Technology Matters: Questions to Live With (The MIT Press) Paperback – August 24, 2007

by David E. Nye (Author)

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Discusses in nontechnical language ten central questions about technology that illuminate what technology is and why it matters.

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."

Print length

282 pages
Language

English
Publisher

The MIT Press
Publication date

August 24, 2007
Grade level

12 and up
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

8 x 5.48 x 0.66 inches
ISBN-10

9780262640671
ISBN-13

978-0262640671
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Editorial Reviews

Review

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—

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—

Review

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

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0262640678
Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press; Reprint edition (August 24, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 282 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780262640671
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262640671
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 5.48 x 0.66 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #286,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #111 in History of Engineering & Technology
- #209 in Social Aspects of Technology
- #231 in History of Technology

Customer Reviews:
4.2 53 ratings

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David E. Nye

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David E. Nye was born in Boston and spent his childhood in rural Pennsylvania, and became a fan of the Red Sox and the Pirates. He was educated at Amherst College, where he sang in several groups, and he completed a PhD in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, where he sang in a Renaissance ensemble on the side. He has taught in the US, Britain, Spain (on a Fulbright), and Denmark, where he now lives and has been a member of several choirs. His more than 220 publications include more than 25 books and 101 articles, in the fields of history, non-fiction, and literature.

As a specialist in the relationship between technology and culture, he has appeared on PBS (NOVA), the BBC, and Danish television, and has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Leeds, Warwick, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Minnesota, Oviedo, Notre Dame, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study.

In 2005 he received the Leonardo da Vinci Medal from the Society for the History of Technology, and in 2013 he was knighted by the Danish Queen.

A PDF file containing a bibliography and index to his publications can be downloaded for free at https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/219592/Technology%27s%20Contexts%20-%20final%20copy.pdf?sequence=3

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M. Varley

A multidisciplinary approach to understanding what technology says about us, and what it in turn we say/think about technology

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

Nye is also the author of "America As Second Creation," a brilliant sociological look at how Americans have viewed themselves through the ages as defined by the fundamental technologies of the times. Here he tackles bigger questions about how technologies - the technologies we create - shape us, influence our perceptions of ourselves and our world, impact us economically and socially, and alternately dominate us and are dominated by us over time. Nye is a thoughtful, insightful writer. It is rare these days to find someone whose thinking ecompasses the social, practical, economic, and personal impacts of technology on our lives and on our understanding of ourselves. Technology matters - and there are matters related to technology that we must deal with as a result. The only reason this isn't a 5 star review is that Nye's approach is so multifaceted that for some readers it may feel as if it is moving a bit slowly at times, but that is only because he refuses to compromise and provide a quick, pithy response to questions that are truly very deep - and that deeply affect us.

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John A. Daly

Technology Does Matter

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 30, 2010

Verified Purchase

David Nye in his book, Technology Matters, persuasively makes the case against technological determinism, suggesting instead that culture and technology interact, each evolving in ways affected by the other. I enjoyed the book, especially as an introduction to a large body of literature on technology and society. I came away from reading the book with a strong hope that we learn how better to make technological decisions, for example by improving the use of advisory bodies for government and corporate decision makers.

3 people found this helpful

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Caelyn

Nye does a great job of showing that he knows a lot about ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 6, 2017

Verified Purchase

Nye does a great job of showing that he knows a lot about technology. He also shows later that he doesn't know how to keep his word on being unbiased. In the first chapter he says that technology cannot aid peace in mankind and technology is not deterministic. Not allowing the reader to come to the conclusion themselves and then forces his opinion at the beginning and end of every chapter.
There were times where I would read a phrase and have to stop and think about how wrong and narrow minded someone has to be to think that technology impacts the future only for the worse.
Do not buy this book. Get the spark notes or something. Or if your professor is saying you need to read this book for their class. Do yourself a favor and drop out.

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Redhead18

Thought provoking and well written

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2013

Verified Purchase

This book raise important questions and is well written and researched. Though I disagreed with the author sometimes
his points are reasoned and researched. He discusses both the positive aspects of technology and the sometimes frightening
questions surrounding. Mind-expanding.

One person found this helpful

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A. Pickett

Not bad for what it is

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 12, 2009

Verified Purchase

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.

4 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Insightful

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 29, 2013

Verified Purchase

Great well written and researched book that will helps provide a big picture view of how technology and society are deeply intertwined.

Helpful

Valerie Douroux Schultz

Professional Company

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 2, 2012

Verified Purchase

This wasn't quite the book I was looking for, but the company took it back and was very cordial and professional.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 14, 2018

Verified Purchase

Perfect! Son was happy!

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Top reviews from other countries

colaroga

great purchase the book was used and arrived quickly

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 29, 2017

Verified Purchase

Course book for STV100 Introduction to Society Technology and Values at the University of Waterloo, great purchase the book was used and arrived quickly. Cost less than at the UW bookstore, the subject matter is relevant for first year engineering students.

2 people found this helpful

seb

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 21, 2015

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fast and painless

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