The history of technology is an essential part of the human race's evolution.
Answer this question, in Pursell's opening chapter.
The "discovery of tools " is part of Pursell's search into the material culture of past settlements for clues to why technology is today so pervasive a means of ordering our lives.
He argues, that if placed in the correct contexts, tools can be read as texts reveal important values and not just styles of artifacts, changes in language, trends in population, or widespread fashions.
Technology shapes the user and maker of tools because these devices are the very expression of intent and extension of our human capacity for inventive imagination.
Prometheus story as Pursell's rhetorical means of:
• casting doubt on tools as simple artifacts because they require skill, caution, and constant attenion
Solar panels make electricity from UV radiation
Daedalus story: knowing who we are and where we are by the stories we tell about tools.
I hope to remove unexamined beliefs about the inevitability of progress from your beliefs about technology.
Previous page | Pursell | Pacey | Postman | Eberhart | Snow | Kaku
