Technics and civilization
'Technics and Civilization' first presented its compelling history of the machine and critical study of its effects on civilization in 1934 -- before television, the personal computer, and the Internet. Drawing upon art, science, philosophy, and the history of culture, Lewis Mumford explained the origin of the machine age and traced its social results, asserting that the development of modern technology had its roots in the Middle Ages rather than the Industrial Revolution. Mumford sagely argued that it was the moral, economic, and political choices we made, not the machines that we used, that determined our then industrially driven economy. Equal parts powerful history and polemic criticism, 'Technics and Civilization' was the first comprehensive attempt in English to portray the development of the machine age over the last thousand years -- and to predict the pull the technological still holds over us today.
Stats for nerds
12recommend
24mentions
20people
2010–2026years
58% recommend42% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford and Critical Path by R Buckminster Fuller
- And as a follow-up, Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization.
Where McLuhan argues technologies shape worldviews, Mumford argues worldviews also shape technologies.
And then perhaps into the world of science and technology studies (STS), where these questions are explored more deeply, and specific cases are examined.
- By that definition of "radical": painful and difficult to read, but yielding enormous positive transformation, then for me Aldous Huxley's "Heaven and Hell" (which contains "Doors of Perceptions"), Erich Fromm's "To Have or to Be", Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Civilization" and his "The Myth of the Machine". YMMV, but for me all of these were "radical" in challenging my purely rational, instrumental, and I think very limited ideas of knowledge, technology and "progress" that I held as a younger scientist/engineer.
- Lewis Mumford's Books;
- Technics & Civilization
- The Culture of Cities
- The Story of Utopias
Lewis Mumford talks about technology, but from an anthropological pint of view.
Another book I would recommend is The Nature of Technology by Brian Arthur
The other I would recommend is James Burk's Connections he's has some books but I but the documentary is highly recommended.
- Lewis Mumford wrote some very interesting books about technology and society:
- These aren't what most people call 'technical books' - that would be SICP, TAoCP etc. as another commenter said.
Instead, these are mostly reporting and memoir about the tech scene and the social effects of tech from a critical point of view. That's a valid category, and these books are okay, some are quite good. BUT they are almost all from the last few years - I would expect 'greatest of all time' to include some true classics.
My own candidate for greatest of all time in this category is Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum (1976). He wrote Eliza, the very first AI chat program, almost sixty years ago. I reread this book recently and it is still very pertinent, especially his discussion of AI.
Other classics in this category:
Tools for Conviviality Ivan Illich (1973)
The Technological Society Jacques Ellul (1954, English translation 1964)
The Human Use of Human Beings Norbert Wiener (1950)
Technics and Civilization Lewis Mumford (1934)
I admit I have only read brief excerpts from these -- but they have all been influential.
[edit: I see I overlooked the 'still in print' restriction. BUT if you want 'the greatest of all time' you have to relax that.]
Related
The myth of the machine
5 recommend · 8
The story of Utopias
2 recommend · 3
The culture of cities
2 recommend · 3
The Technological Society
36 recommend · 96
The two cultures
5 recommend · 34
Energy and Civilization
23 recommend · 81
Civilization
1 recommend · 4
