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Technology Matters: Questions to Live With (Mit Press) Paperback – August 24, 2007

by David E. Nye (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 52 ratings
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Discusses in nontechnical language ten central questions about technology that illuminate what technology is and why it matters.

Technology matters, writes David Nye, because it is inseparable from being human. We have used tools for more than 100,000 years, and their central purpose has not always been to provide necessities. People excel at using old tools to solve new problems and at inventing new tools for more elegant solutions to old tasks. Perhaps this is because we are intimate with devices and machines from an early age—as children, we play with technological toys: trucks, cars, stoves, telephones, model railroads, Playstations. Through these machines we imagine ourselves into a creative relationship with the world. As adults, we retain this technological playfulness with gadgets and appliances—Blackberries, cell phones, GPS navigation systems in our cars.

We use technology to shape our world, yet we think little about the choices we are making. In Technology Matters, Nye tackles ten central questions about our relationship to technology, integrating a half-century of ideas about technology into ten cogent and concise chapters, with wide-ranging historical examples from many societies. He asks: Can we define technology? Does technology shape us, or do we shape it? Is technology inevitable or unpredictable? (Why do experts often fail to get it right?)? How do historians understand it? Are we using modern technology to create cultural uniformity, or diversity? To create abundance, or an ecological crisis? To destroy jobs or create new opportunities? Should "the market" choose our technologies? Do advanced technologies make us more secure, or escalate dangers? Does ubiquitous technology expand our mental horizons, or encapsulate us in artifice?

These large questions may have no final answers yet, but we need to wrestle with them—to live them, so that we may, as Rilke puts it, "live along some distant day into the answers."

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    282 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    The MIT Press
  4. Publication date
    August 24, 2007
  5. Grade level
    12 and up
  6. Reading age
    18 years and up
  7. Dimensions
    8 x 5.48 x 0.66 inches
  8. ISBN-10
    9780262640671
  9. ISBN-13
    978-0262640671
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Provocative...Nye's mission in this anecdote-rich, briskly analytical, and indignation-arousing overview is to make us think more critically about the boons and banes of technology and make our views known.—Donna Seaman—

Nye's book addresses many of the issues and debates surrounding our highly textured technological society, and these are reflected in the questions he asks. Does technology control us? Does it lead to cultural uniformity or diversity? To sustainable abundance or to ecological crisis? To more security or escalating danger? The book is rich in examples, is easily readable and is short enough to be recommended for a day's read.

—Nature—

The incessant march of technology's evolution is the subject of David Nye's very readable book. It is written in the form of questions and expansive answers, with read like a primer (if not a discursive catechism) on what historians of technology have been thinking about over the half-century or so since their field was formalized. One of the striking effects of Nye's treatment is that it leads the reader to the incontrovertible conclusion that the answers to questions about technology evolve no less than technology itself. This is hardly surprising: thinking and writing about technology can be as creative a pursuit as inventing.

—New Scientist—

About the Author

David E. Nye is Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute and the History of Science and Technology program at the University of Minnesota and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. His other books published by the MIT Press include Electrifying America and American Technological Sublime. He was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 2005 and was knighted by the Queen of Denmark in 2013.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0262640678
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press; Reprint edition (August 24, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 282 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780262640671
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262640671
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 5.48 x 0.66 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 52 ratings

About the author

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David E. Nye

David E. Nye

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David E. Nye was born in Boston and spent his childhood in rural Pennsylvania, and became a fan of the Red Sox and the Pirates. He was educated at Amherst College, where he sang in several groups, and he completed a PhD in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, where he sang in a Renaissance ensemble on the side. He has taught in the US, Britain, Spain (on a Fulbright), and Denmark, where he now lives and has been a member of several choirs. His more than 220 publications include more than 25 books and 101 articles, in the fields of history, non-fiction, and literature.

As a specialist in the relationship between technology and culture, he has appeared on PBS (NOVA), the BBC, and Danish television, and has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Leeds, Warwick, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Minnesota, Oviedo, Notre Dame, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study.

In 2005 he received the Leonardo da Vinci Medal from the Society for the History of Technology, and in 2013 he was knighted by the Danish Queen.

A PDF file containing a bibliography and index to his publications can be downloaded for free at https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/219592/Technology%27s%20Contexts%20-%20final%20copy.pdf?sequence=3

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
52 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Lucky Charms
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2018
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Perfect! Son was happy!
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book for my ITCS
Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2014
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Good book for my ITCS. Using it for UNCC. Started reading it and like it as I go along with it.
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M. Varley
4.0 out of 5 stars A multidisciplinary approach to understanding what technology says about us, and what it in turn we say/think about technology
Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2017
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Nye is also the author of "America As Second Creation," a brilliant sociological look at how Americans have viewed themselves through the ages as defined by the fundamental technologies of the times. Here he tackles bigger questions about how technologies - the technologies we create - shape us, influence our perceptions of ourselves and our world, impact us economically and socially, and alternately dominate us and are dominated by us over time. Nye is a thoughtful, insightful writer. It is rare these days to find someone whose thinking ecompasses the social, practical, economic, and personal impacts of technology on our lives and on our understanding of ourselves. Technology matters - and there are matters related to technology that we must deal with as a result. The only reason this isn't a 5 star review is that Nye's approach is so multifaceted that for some readers it may feel as if it is moving a bit slowly at times, but that is only because he refuses to compromise and provide a quick, pithy response to questions that are truly very deep - and that deeply affect us.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2017
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teacher made me buy it
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Caelyn
1.0 out of 5 stars Nye does a great job of showing that he knows a lot about ...
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2017
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Nye does a great job of showing that he knows a lot about technology. He also shows later that he doesn't know how to keep his word on being unbiased. In the first chapter he says that technology cannot aid peace in mankind and technology is not deterministic. Not allowing the reader to come to the conclusion themselves and then forces his opinion at the beginning and end of every chapter.
There were times where I would read a phrase and have to stop and think about how wrong and narrow minded someone has to be to think that technology impacts the future only for the worse.
Do not buy this book. Get the spark notes or something. Or if your professor is saying you need to read this book for their class. Do yourself a favor and drop out.
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CJWCA
5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely Questions To Think Hard About
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2007
This book outlines a brief history of technology and the social uses of each innovation. The interaction between technology and society cannot be ignored, which is a great consideration in this great monograph. Easily something to consider for the rest of your life.
2 people found this helpful
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John A. Daly
4.0 out of 5 stars Technology Does Matter
Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2010
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David Nye in his book, Technology Matters, persuasively makes the case against technological determinism, suggesting instead that culture and technology interact, each evolving in ways affected by the other. I enjoyed the book, especially as an introduction to a large body of literature on technology and society. I came away from reading the book with a strong hope that we learn how better to make technological decisions, for example by improving the use of advisory bodies for government and corporate decision makers.
3 people found this helpful
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ACC
1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible typography on the iPad. Very disappointed with the purchase.
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2012
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Not worth reading with this this type of typography. Very disappointed with Amazon. I now how to revert back to reading with the old-fashioned book. I downloaded this because I wanted to take advantage of the inbuilt dictionary. I guess I can't do that now.
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colaroga
5.0 out of 5 stars great purchase the book was used and arrived quickly
Reviewed in Canada on December 29, 2017
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Course book for STV100 Introduction to Society Technology and Values at the University of Waterloo, great purchase the book was used and arrived quickly. Cost less than at the UW bookstore, the subject matter is relevant for first year engineering students.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on July 21, 2015
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