|
Technology, perhaps the most salient feature
of our time, affects everything from jobs to international
law, yet ranks among the most unpredictable facets of human
life. Here Robert Mcc Adams, renowned anthropologist and
Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, builds
a new approach to understanding the circumstances that drive
technological change, stressing its episodic, irregular
nature. The result is nothing less than a sweeping history
of technological transformation from ancient times until
now. Rare in antiquity, the bursts of innovation that mark
the path of technology have gradually accelerated and have
become an almost continuous feature of our culture. Repeatedly
shifting in direction, this path has been shaped by a host
of interacting social, cultural, and scientific forces rather
than any deterministic logic. Thus future technological
developments, Adams maintains, are predictable only over
the very short term.
Adam's account highlights Britain and the
United States from early modern times onward. Locating the
roots of the Industrial Revolution in British economic and
social institutions, he goes on to consider the new forms
of enterprise in which it was embodied and its loss of momentum
in the later nineteenth century. He then turns to the early
United States whose path toward industrialization initially
involved considerable "technology transfer" from
Britain. Propelled by the advent of mass production, world
industrial leadership passed to the United States around
the end of the nineteenth century. Government-supported
research and development, guided partly by military interests,
helped secure this leadership.
Today, as Adams shows, we find ourselves
in a profoundly changed era. The United States has led the
way to a strikingly new multinational pattern of opportunity
and risk, whose technological primacy can no longer be credited
to any single nation. This recent trend places even more
responsibility on the state to establish policies that will
keep markets open for its companies and make its industries
more competitive. Adams concludes with an argument for active
government support of science and technology research that
should be read by anyone interested in America's ability
to compete globally.
Robert Mcc Adams is a former Provost
of the University of Chicago and Secretary Emeritus of the
Smithsonian Institution. Now an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology
at the University of California, San Diego, he is currently
a Fellow (1995-96) at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Berlin. His many books and articles, mostly taking a very
long-term perspective similar to this study, have previously
concentrated on urban and agricultural development over
the past six millennia in the Near East.
|
