David Edgerton excepted of course -- he hasn't really written on Britain's deliberately pathetic production of penicillin during the war years but he is unlikely to blame it on the Warfare State's "abject poverty" and "The Blitz".
Showing posts with label david edgerton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label david edgerton. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Saturday, May 26, 2012
HIGH MODERNITY's technology versus its science...
By 1900, as Vaclav Smil reminds us ,most of the technology (machines, 'things' in David Edgerton's sense of that word) around us today had been invented and was in active use: as well as being further commercially developed and technically improved.
They are still in use, still under constant commercial development and steady technological improvement.
They are the fruits of the generation of The Children of High Modernity.
They are still in use, still under constant commercial development and steady technological improvement.
They are the fruits of the generation of The Children of High Modernity.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
David Edgerton's 'mule spinners' and my grannie's lifelong optimistic disposition
My father's mother, May ,was born in 1900 and was 15 in 1915.
I must say I never saw any sign that the horrors of the Great War, 1914-1918, had ever effected her much.
I think this was because she grew into her formative teenage years under circumstances never seen before or since in Manchester England.
Her father Eddie made his living installing mule spinners into Northern England's cotton mills and I never appreciated just how good his business was, during May's early years ,until I re-read David Edgerton's SHOCK OF THE OLD.
I must say I never saw any sign that the horrors of the Great War, 1914-1918, had ever effected her much.
I think this was because she grew into her formative teenage years under circumstances never seen before or since in Manchester England.
Her father Eddie made his living installing mule spinners into Northern England's cotton mills and I never appreciated just how good his business was, during May's early years ,until I re-read David Edgerton's SHOCK OF THE OLD.
SVE 'MUST READ' book : David Edgerton's "SHOCK OF THE OLD"
Re-reading British historian of technology David's Edgerton's "SHOCK OF THE OLD" recently, I found it a fount of zillions of ideas, stimulating my mind into overdrive, and forcing me to look at our world anew.
Perhaps in light of my recent studies on the continuing impact of (mutated) Romanticism upon everything, I can better appreciate the force of Edgerton's main argument that histories of technology and science focus far, far, far too exclusively on 'priority' and 'original originality' ----- entrepreneurs,inventors and scientists all being obsessed with being original ,creative and 'the first'.
Perhaps in light of my recent studies on the continuing impact of (mutated) Romanticism upon everything, I can better appreciate the force of Edgerton's main argument that histories of technology and science focus far, far, far too exclusively on 'priority' and 'original originality' ----- entrepreneurs,inventors and scientists all being obsessed with being original ,creative and 'the first'.
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