Today technology has created a world of dazzling progress, growing disparities of wealth and poverty, and looming threats to the environment. Technology: A World History offers an illuminating backdrop to our present moment–a brilliant history of invention around the globe. Historian Daniel R. Headrick ranges from the Stone Age and the beginnings of agriculture to the Industrial Revolution and the electronic revolution of the recent past. In tracing the growing power of humans over nature through increasingly powerful innovations, he compares the evolution of technology in different parts of the world, providing a much broader account than is found in other histories of technology. We also discover how small changes sometimes have dramatic results–how, for instance, the stirrup revolutionized war and gave the Mongols a deadly advantage over the Chinese. And how the nailed horseshoe was a pivotal breakthrough for western farmers. Enlivened with many illustrations, Technology offers a … More >>

Technology: A World History

From the American entry into World War II until September 1943, U.S. submarines experienced an abnormally high number of torpedo failures. These failures resulted from three defects present in the primary torpedo of the day, the Mark XIV. These defects were a tendency to run deeper than the set depth, the frequent premature detonation of the magnetic influence exploder, and the failure of the contact exploder when hitting a target at the textbook 90-degree angle. Ironically, despite using a completely independent design, the Germans experienced the same three defects. The Germans, however, fixed their defects in six months, while it took the Americans 22 months. Much of the delay on the American side resulted from the denial of senior leaders in the operational forces and in the Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) that the torpedo itself was defective. Instead, they blamed crews for poor marksmanship or lack of training. In the end, however, the submarine force itself overcame the bureau… More >>

Iron Men and Tin Fish: The Race to Build a Better Torpedo during World War II

The major shift going on today in the technologies of reading and writing raises important questions about conventional conceptions of literacy and its role in education, society, and culture. To what extent and in what ways is literacy being transformed by new technologies? This central question is addressed in this volume from diverse, multidisciplinary perspectives. The contributors met as a group to discuss drafts of their chapters at a one-day meeting convened and sponsored by the National Reading Research Center; they also read each others’ chapters prior to this gathering. This meeting was followed by a two-day conference attended by approximately 180 researchers, educators, and policymakers who responded to an open invitation to present papers and to attend sessions focusing on the six major themes of this volume. Contributors then revised their chapters based on interactions with fellow contributors, conference participants, and the volume’s editors…. More >>

Handbook of Literacy and Technology: Transformations in A Post-typographic World

From the invention of the wheel to the mapping of the genome, technology has always been deeply intertwined with the course of human history.
Now, this fascinating set explores the role technology has played in eighteen separate cultures in world history, and reveals the many ways people use technology to control their environment, express religious values, deploy political power, confer social status, and afford themselves varying degrees of pleasure, comfort, and security. Whether focusing on Egyptian pyramids or medieval cathedrals, the Mayan astronomical calendar or the internet, Technology in World History illuminates the amazing array of technologies that humans have developed to shape and give meaning to their lives…. More >>

Technology in World History: 7-volume set

The seemingly amorphous phenomenon we call globalization involves concrete realities that make it a major source of social change in our contemporary world. Bringing globalization alive for students, this book uses examples and perspectives from economics, technology, and mass media to show how globalization is producing unprecedented impacts on education and culture. Education at all levels–from primary school to university education–is undergoing a world wide transformation of its objectives, values, and practices. New technologies and communication practices have promoted the West’s optimism that market forces can replace the former governmental responsibilities for social welfare and the inclusion of diverse cultures. New emphasis on competition, quality control, parental choice, marketing, and the linkage of education to work means that schools all over the world face innovations and challenges to established practices. Meanwhile, the worldwide expansion of entertainment and adv… More >>

Education in a Globalized World: The Connectivity of Power, Technology, and Knowledge

This blog discusses a wide rage of issues on technology and its use in the fight against poverty.Kindle blogs are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when you’re not wirelessly connected. And unlike RSS readers which often only provide headlines, blogs on Kindle give you full text content and images, and are updated wirelessly throughout the day…. More >>

Clement Nyirenda’s blog world

This blog discusses a wide range of issues on technology and its use in the fight against technologyKindle blogs are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when you’re not wirelessly connected. And unlike RSS readers which often only provide headlines, blogs on Kindle give you full text content and images, and are updated wirelessly throughout the day…. More >>

Clement Nyirenda’s blog world

This blog discusses a wide range of issues on technology and its use in the fight against technologyKindle blogs are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when you’re not wirelessly connected. And unlike RSS readers which often only provide headlines, blogs on Kindle give you full text content and images, and are updated wirelessly throughout the day…. More >>

Clement Nyirenda’s blog world

Technology is one of the dominant forces shaping the emerging postmodern world. Indeed the very fabric of daily life is dependent upon various information, communication, and transportation technologies. With anticipated advances in biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and robotics, that dependence will increase. Yet this growing dependence is accompanied with a deep ambivalence. For many, technology symbolises the faith of the postmodern world, but it is an ambivalent faith encapsulating both our hopes and fears for the future. This book examines the religious foundations underlying this troubled faith in technology, as well as critically and constructively engaging particular technological developments from a theological perspective…. More >>

From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology And Technology in a Postmodern World

Most general histories of technology are Eurocentrist, focusing on a main line of Western technology that stretches from the Greeks is through the computer. In this very different book, Arnold Pacey takes a global view, placing the development of technology squarely in a “world civilization.” He portrays the process as a complex dialectic by which inventions borrowed from one culture are adopted to suit another.

Arnold Pacey is a physicist turned historian whose publications have contributed to the British appropriate-technology movement. He has written widely on science, technology, and agriculture. His previous books include The Maze of Ingenuity and The Culture of Technology…. More >>

Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History