A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium

by Robert Friedel

Overview

How technological change in the West has been driven by the pursuit of improvement: a history of technology, from plows and printing presses to penicillin, the atomic bomb, and the computer.

Why does technology change over time, how does it change, and what difference does it make? In this sweeping, ambitious look at a thousand years of Western experience, Robert Friedel argues that technological change comes largely through the pursuit of improvement—the deep-rooted belief that things could be done in a better way. What Friedel calls the "culture of improvement" is manifested every day in the ways people carry out their tasks in life—from tilling fields and raising children to waging war.

Improvements can be ephemeral or lasting, and one person's improvement may not always be viewed as such by others. Friedel stresses the social processes by which we define what improvements are and decide which improvements will last and which will not. These processes, he emphasizes, have created both winners and losers in history.

Friedel presents a series of narratives of Western technology that begin in the eleventh century and stretch into the twenty-first. Familiar figures from the history of invention are joined by others—the Italian preacher who described the first eyeglasses, the dairywomen displaced from their control over cheesemaking, and the little-known engineer who first suggested a grand tower to Gustav Eiffel. Friedel traces technology from the plow and the printing press to the internal combustion engine, the transistor, and the space shuttle. Friedel also reminds us that faith in improvement can sometimes have horrific consequences, as improved weaponry makes warfare ever more deadly and the drive for improving human beings can lead to eugenics and even genocide. The most comprehensive attempt to tell the story of Western technology in many years, engagingly written and lavishly illustrated, A Culture of Improvement documents the ways in which the drive for improvement has shaped our modern world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262514019
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	02/26/2010
Series:	The MIT Press
Pages:	600
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Friedel is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Pioneer Plastic: The Making and Selling of Celluloid, Edison's Electric Light, and Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty.

Table of Contents

Preface     vii
Technology and Improvement     1
Plows and Horses     13
Power     31
Buildings for God and Man     49
Transforming Matter     71
Light and Time     91
Types of Change     113
Earth, Fire, Water, and Air     129
Improving Knowledge     149
Improvers and Engineers     171
Raising Fire     191
Fabrics of Change     211
Artisans, Philosophes, and Entrepreneurs     235
Airs and Lightning     255
Mobility     275
Messages     295
Engineering Emerges     319
Stuff, Reality, and Dreams     341
The Improvement of Violence     363
Learning     385
Dynamics     401
Land and Life     429
Scale     449
The Corruption of Improvement     479
Networks     503
Improvement's End     527
Notes     545
Index     569

What People are Saying About This

Merritt Roe Smith

This is a splendid book, recalling Mumford's Technics and Civilization in its scope and erudition. It challenges to think carefully about the idea of progress, the 'culture of improvement,' and the uneasy relationship that persists between freedom, power, and social responsibility in the modern technological world.

Endorsement

This is a splendid book, recalling Mumford's Technics and Civilization in its scope and erudition. It challenges to think carefully about the idea of progress, the 'culture of improvement,' and the uneasy relationship that persists between freedom, power, and social responsibility in the modern technological world.

—Merritt Roe Smith, Cutten Professor of the History of Technology, MIT

From the Publisher

From steam engines to calico printing, from cheesemaking to supersonic flight, this is the one place to go if you are fascinated by technology and want to know how it has shaped the modern world. In A Culture of Improvement, Robert Friedel has elegantly synthesized decades of scholoarly research in the history of technology into a lively and insightful account of modernity.

—Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Janice and Julian Bers, Professor of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Social history of American Technology

Ruth Schwartz Cowan

From steam engines to calico printing, from cheesemaking to supersonic flight, this is the one place to go if you are fascinated by technology and want to know how it has shaped the modern world. In A Culture of Improvement, Robert Friedel has elegantly synthesized decades of scholoarly research in the history of technology into a lively and insightful account of modernity.

Editorial Reviews

By virtue of its range, quality, length (nearly 600 pages) and comprehensiveness, Robert Friedel's book will go to the top of the list as the standard text for an introductory Charlemagne-to-George-Bush course on the history of technology.—Times Higher Education Supplement—

A rare, detailed, nontheoretical survey that exposes the veins of invention that run through Western culture, creating an astonishing picture of achievement through its careful accumulation of small details. Under Mr. Friedel's firm touch it begins to be possible to feel something like the primal pulse of this culture.

—Edward Rothstein, The New York Times—

Friedel's dazzling tour de force describes almost every aspect of technology.

—Joel Mokyr, Journal of Interdisciplinary History—

Robert Friedel...can not only impart the lesser-known details of a familiar story but masterfully show how strange and wonderful it is that things happened the way they did.

—Adam Keiper, The Wall Street Journal—

...[T]his book is also a rare, detailed, nontheoretical survey that exposes the veins of invention that run through Western culture, creating an astonishing picture of achievement through its careful accumulation of small details. Mr. Friedel surveys the kinds of inventions and technologies that developed in the West over centuries, compiling a roster of innovation that encompasses everything from textiles to time telling. Under his firm touch it begins to be possible to feel something like the primal pulse of this culture.

—Edward Rothstein, The New York Times—

From the Publisher

...[T]his book is also a rare, detailed, nontheoretical survey that exposes the veins of invention that run through Western culture, creating an astonishing picture of achievement through its careful accumulation of small details. Mr. Friedel surveys the kinds of inventions and technologies that developed in the West over centuries, compiling a roster of innovation that encompasses everything from textiles to time telling. Under his firm touch it begins to be possible to feel something like the primal pulse of this culture.

—Edward Rothstein, The New York Times

Reviews

...[T]his book is also a rare, detailed, nontheoretical survey that exposes the veins of invention that run through Western culture, creating an astonishing picture of achievement through its careful accumulation of small details. Mr. Friedel surveys the kinds of inventions and technologies that developed in the West over centuries, compiling a roster of innovation that encompasses everything from textiles to time telling. Under his firm touch it begins to be possible to feel something like the primal pulse of this culture.

The New York Times - Edward Rothstein

Robert Friedel...can not only impart the lesser-known details of a familiar story but masterfully show how strange and wonderful it is that things happened the way they did.

The Wall Street Journal - Adam Keiper

Friedel's dazzling tour de force describes almost every aspect of technology.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History - Joel Mokyr

By virtue of its range, quality, length (nearly 600 pages) and comprehensiveness, Robert Friedel's book will go to the top of the list as the standard text for an introductory Charlemagne-to-George-Bush course on the history of technology.

Times Higher Education Supplement