Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation / / ed. by Helga Nowotny.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Bijker, Wiebe E.,; Gardey, Delphine,; Hughes, Thomas P.,; Kupper, Patrick,; Nettelbeck, Joachim,; Nowotny, Helga,; Pickstone, John V.,; Salomon, Jean-Jacques,; Vogel, Hans Ulrich,; Wajcman, Judy,; Williams, Rosalind,
• HerausgeberIn: Nowotny, Helga,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2006]; ©2006
• Year of Publication: 2006
• Language: English
• Series: Making Sense of History ; 9
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (232 p.)

Underlying the current dynamics of technological developments, their divergence or convergence and the abundance of options, promises and risks they contain, is the quest for innovation, the contributors to this volume argue. The seemingly insatiable demand for novelty coincides with the rise of modern science and the onset of modernity in Western societies. Never before has the Baconian dream been so close to becoming reality: wrapped into a globalizing capitalism that seeks ever expanding markets for new products, artifacts and designs and new processes that lead to gains in efficiency, productivity and profit. However, approaching these developments through a wider historical and cultural perspectives, means to raise questions about the plurality of cultures, the interaction between "hardware" and "software" and about the nature of the interfaces where technology meets with economic, social, legal, historical constraints and opportunities. The authors come to the conclusion that inside a seemingly homogenous package and a seemingly universal quest for innovation many differences remain.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Quest for Innovation and Cultures of Technology -- Part I ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CULTURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND INNOVATION -- Chapter 1: Culture and Innovation -- Chapter 2: The Unintended Consequences of Innovation: Change and Community at MIT -- Chapter 3: The Vulnerability of Technological Culture -- Part II: The Gender Bias of Technological Innovations -- Chapter 4: Culture of Gender, and Culture of Technology: The Gendering of Things in France’s Office Spaces between 1890 and 1930 -- Chapter 5: Suspending Gender? Reflecting on Innovations in Cyberspace -- Part III: Pluralist Histories of Science, Innovation, and War -- Chapter 6: Innovation, Diverse Knowledges, and the Presumed Singularity of Science -- Chapter 7: Scientists on the Battlefield: Cultures and Conflicts -- Part IV: The Adoption of Innovations in Different Cultural Contexts -- Chapter 8: From Prophecies of the Future to Incarnations of the Past: Cultures of Nuclear Technology -- Chapter 9: The Mining Industry in Traditional China: Intraand Intercultural Comparisons -- Epilogue: Interdisciplinarity and the Innovation Process How to Organize Spaces of Translation, or, the Politics of Innovation -- Contributors -- Select Bibliography -- Index