The Idea of Technology

General Resources
History of Technology
Theory / Sociology / Politics of Technology
Luddism (Anti-Technology)

= More Info (see policy on "more info" links)

General Resources

• Centre for Social Theory and Technology, Keele U.
• Centre for Urban Technology - U. Newcastle
• Technology for All Americans Project ("to help achieve technological literacy at a national level") (International Technology Education Assoc.)
• The Technology Page (Developmental Technologies, Inc.)
  1. Selected Links:
  2. Art & Technology
  3. Business & Technology
  4. Information Technology
  5. Education & Technology
  6. Emerging Technology
  7. Industry & Technology
  8. Obsolesence
  9. Nanotechnology
  10. People & Technology
  11. Science & Technology
  12. The Technological Risk List
  13. Wild Technology Links
  14. Technology Around the World
  15. Technology Reference Sources

History of Technology

(Also see Industrial Revolution(s) and History of Information and Computing)

• Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., eds., Technology in Western Civilization, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967)
• L. White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962)

Theory / Sociology / Politics of Technology

• Madeleine Akrich
  1. "The De-Scription of Technical Objects," in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 205-24
  2. ______ and Bruno Latour, "A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies," in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 259-64
• Stanley Aronowitz, "Technology and the Future of Work," in Bender and Druckrey (1994), pp. 15-29
• Gretchen Bender and Timothy Druckrey, ed., Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology (Seattle: Bay, 1994)
• David Blacker (Illinois State U.), "Philosophy of Technology and Education: An Invitation to Inquiry" (1996) (Philosophy of Education Society)
• John December, "Blinded by Science?" (1996) (Computer Mediated Communication Magazine)
• Hubert L. Dreyfus (U. California, Berkeley), "Highway Bridges and Feasts: Heidegger and Borgmann on How to Affirm Technology"
• Samuel Ebersole (Regent U., Virginia), "Media Determinism in Cyberspace" (1985) (hypertext essay; includes sections on history, philosophy and sociology of technology)
  1. Selected Resources:
  2. Brief History of Technology
  3. Early Philosophers of Technology
  4. The Neutrality of Technology
  5. Philosophical Assumptions of Cyberspace
• Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964) [originally pub. in French as La Technique ou l'enjeu du siècle by Librairie Armand Colin, 1954]
• Ends and Means: Journal of the University of Aberdeen Centre for Philosophy Technology and Society
• Essays on the Philosophy of Technology (good collection of links) (Frank Edler, Metropolitan Community C., Omaha, Nebraska)
• Andrew Feenberg
  • Feenburg's Home Page (San Diego State U.)
    • "The Written World: On the Theory and Practice of Computer Conferencing" (1989)
    • "Critical Theory of Technology" (1991)
    • "Heidegger, Habermas, and the Essence of Technology: Dystopian Modernity"
    • "Marcuse or Habermas: Two Critiques of Technology" (1996)
    • "Summary Remarks on My Approach to the Philosophical Study of Technology"
  • "Subversive Rationalization: Technology, Power, and Democracy," in Technology and the Politics of Knowledge, ed. Andrew Feenberg and Alastair Hannay (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 3-22
• David Gelernter, Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology (BasicBooks / Perseus, 1998) ("This book explains how beauty drives the computer revolution: how lust for beauty and elegance underpinned the most important discoveris in computational history. . . ," p. 1)
• Jürgen Habermas, "Technology and Science as 'Ideology," trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon, 1970), rpt. in Jürgen Habermas On Society and Politics: A Reader, ed. Steven Seidman (Boston: Beacon, 1989)
• Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," in Basic Writings from Being and Time to The Task of Thinking, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977, pp. 283-317
• Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1948)
• Frank M. Hull, et al., "The Effect of Technology on Alienation from Work," Work and Occupations 9 (1982): 31-57
• Don Ihde, Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1990)
• Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World (Reading, mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1994) | Online Version
• Bruno Latour
  1. "On Technical Mediation--Philosophy, Sociology, Genealogy," Common Knowledge 3, n. 2 (Fall 1994): 29-64
  2. "Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts," in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 225-58
  1. "Pasteur on Lactic Acid Yeast: A Partial Semiotic Analysis" (1993) ("I want to illustrate the possible usefulness of literary theory for the study of scientific practices by showing how a text written by Louis Pasteur in 1857 makes use of several philosophies of science that are a good deal more sophisticated than many of those we bring to the field of science studies") (Configurations)
  2. T. Hugh Crawford (Virginia Military Institute), "An Interview with Bruno Latour" (1993) (Configurations)
• Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club, 1992)
• Herbert Marcuse, "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology," in Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, eds., Th eEssential Frankfurt School Reader (New York: continuum, 1982) (orig. published 1941)
• Victor Margolin (U. Illinois, Chicago), "The Politics of the Artificial" (1995) (philosophical approach to the concept of artifice that includes discussion of William Gibson, Jean Baudrillard, Donna Haraway, and other postmodern writers)
• Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (1934; rpt. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961)
• Arnold Pacey, The Culture of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983)
• Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage / Random House, 1992)
• Thomas Pynchon, "Is it O.K. to Be a Luddite?" (1984) (New York Times Book Review / Spermatikos Logos)
• Ian Reinecke, Electronic Illusions: A Skeptic's View of Our High-Tech Future (New York: Penguin, 1984)
• Nathan Rosenberg, Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics, and History (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994)
• Andrew Ross
  1. "The New Smartness," in Bender and Druckrey (1994), pp. 329-41
  2. Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Limits (London: Verso, 1991)
• David Rothenberg, Hand's End: Technology and the Limits of Nature (Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. California Press, 1993)
• Society for Philosophy and Technology: A Quarterly Electronic Journal (available in both HTML and Adobe Acrobat formats)
• Techne: Society for Philosophy & Technology -- A Quarterly Electronic Journal
• Evan Watkins, Throwaways: Work Culture and Consumer Education (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1993)
• Langdon Winner (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
  1. Autonomous Technology: Technics Out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977)
  2. "Do Artifacts Have Politics?", Daedalus 109, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 121-36
  3. "How Technomania Is Overtaking the Millennium" (1997) (Newsday)
  4. "Techne and Politeia: The Technical Constitution of Society"
  5. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986)

Luddism (Anti-Technology)

(See also Theory / Sociology / Politics of Technology)

• Monika Bauerlein, "The Luddites are Back: To Resist or Not to Resist, That is the Question" (UTNE Reader)
• M. Kinsley, "Corporate Luddism," New Republic, Dec. 1989: 4
• Luddites On-Line ("the only place in cyberspace devoted exclusively to luddites, technophobes and other refugees from the Information Revolution. Our user-friendly graphic interface allows you to discuss strategies for undermining the growing cybourgeoisie and explore luddite-related links on the hated Internet") | Luddite Links
• New Luddite Society
• Thomas Pynchon, "Is it O.K. to Be a Luddite?" (1984) (New York Times Book Review / Spermatikos Logos)
• Theodore Roszak, The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking (Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press, 1986; rev. ed. 1994) (esp. Chap. 3, "The Hidden Curriculum")
• David Wright (KQED-FM / KRON-TV), "Technophobia: A Small Band of Hopefuls Battles the Giant of Progress" (1995)
• Of Related Interest:
  • Technorealism.org ("As technorealists, we seek to expand the fertile middle ground between techno-utopianism and neo-Luddism. We are technology 'critics' in the same way, and for the same reasons, that others are food critics, art critics, or literary critics. We can be passionately optimistic about some technologies, skeptical and disdainful of others. Still, our goal is neither to champion nor dismiss technology, but rather to understand it and apply it in a manner more consistent with basic human values")
    1. "Technorealism: An Overview"
    2. Technolrealism Bibliography (includes both online and print works)
    3. "A Benign Declaration Treated as Revolutionary" (1998) (article on technorealism; requires free subscription) (New York Times on the Web)
    4. Michael Kinsley, "Goldilocks in Cyberspace" (1998) (commentary on technorealism) (Slate)
    5. Steven Levy, "Glorifying the Obvious," Newsweek, March 30, 1998, p. 74 (commentary on technorealism)