Thomas Parke Hughes

Wiebe E. Bijker

Trevor J. Pinch

"The impact of technology on society is clear and unmistakeable. The influence of society on technology is more subtle. The 13 essays in this book have been written by a diverse group of scholars united by a common interest in creating a new field - the sociology of technology. They draw on a wide array of case studies - from cooking stoves to missile systems, from 15th-century Portugal to today's Al labs - to outline an original research program based on a synthesis of ideas from the social studies of science and the history of technology. Together they affirm the need for a study of technology that gives equal weight to technical, social, economic, and political questions"--Back cover.

New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology

The Social Construction of Technological Systems

Awarded the Dexter Prize by the Society for the History of Technology, this book offers a comparative history of the evolution of modern electric power systems. It described large-scale technological change and demonstrates that technology cannot be understood unless placed in a cultural context.

Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930

Networks of Power

The author shows how the socalled "militaryindustrial complex" succeeded in revolutionizing aerospace, computers, and communications by changing how technology was used, understood, and managed in business, industry, and government. Reprint.

Rescuing Prometheus

Trevor Pinch

An anniversary edition of an influential book that introduced a groundbreaking approach to the study of science, technology, and society. This pioneering book, first published in 1987, launched the new field of social studies of technology. It introduced a method of inquiry--social construction of technology, or SCOT--that became a key part of the wider discipline of science and technology studies. The book helped the MIT Press shape its STS list and inspired the Inside Technology series. The thirteen essays in the book tell stories about such varied technologies as thirteenth-century galleys, eighteenth-century cooking stoves, and twentieth-century missile systems. Taken together, they affirm the fruitfulness of an approach to the study of technology that gives equal weight to technical, social, economic, and political questions, and they demonstrate the illuminating effects of the integration of empirics and theory. The approaches in this volume--collectively called SCOT (after the volume's title) have since broadened their scope, and twenty-five years after the publication of this book, it is difficult to think of a technology that has not been studied from a SCOT perspective and impossible to think of a technology that cannot be studied that way.

Looks at how the military and private industry worked together on four projects, including the SAGE interactive digital computer, the Atlas Missile Project, the Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project, and ARPANET, forerunner of the Internet

Agatha C. Hughes

This collection of essays by leading scholars explores the numerous and brilliant facets of Lewis Mumford's insights into technology and modern culture. Characterized as one of the last of the American public intellectuals, Mumford has written extensively about those issues and problems that are most challenging and troubling for modern society. His Technics and Civilization (1934) and the two-volume The Myth of the Machine (1967 and 1970) still provide an agenda for discussion of technology and culture. Mumford foresightedly warned against simplistic technological determinism by exploring the ways in which values shape technology. He is generally recognized as a seminal figure who laid the foundations for the fields of American Studies and the History of Technology. This compelling portrait of Mumford, written in an accessible style, and exploring highly controversial, timely issues, makes a substantial contribution to the rapidly growing interest in the interaction of technology and culture, and is must reading for students of the history and sociology of science and technology, American studies, and American intellectual and cultural history.

Thomas Parke Hughes

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