Technology reorganizes how things get done.

""If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side effects? This area – between delight and discomfort – is where BLACK MIRROR, my new drama series, is set". . . . on the dark side of our love affair with technology.

See: Charlie Brooker in The Guardian.

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Authors:

The Two Cultures

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

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Three great changes that shaped our technology today:

Fire	Steam engines	X-rays of electromagnetic spectrum

Steam Engine depicted in the above cartoon was an improvement on the original machine.	Component sketch of a double acting steam engine
overview | weeks | related pages | what a tool complex is | animations | concepts | story

Next

How we proceed.

A crucial summary observation by Heather Lechtman.

Weekly organization

Remember | Understand | Apply | Analyze | Evaluate | Create

Authors

	Tasks
		CORE
	Remember
		Clarify
	Understand
		Organize
	Apply
		Reflect
	Analyze
		Examine
	Evaluate
	Create

Read the books carefully and take notes to define terms and arguments that you then post on the class wiki.

The Two Cultures
Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

Where are we going next?

                                                            Windmill on the Carolina coast, 18th century.

A study of any tool and the techniques we acquire to use them –thus understanding technology– begins with a story.

Remember |\ Understand |\ Apply |\ Analyze |\ Evaluate |\ Create

 

"It is a complex story that scientists are now constructing out of contributions (of many specialists)....The story hopes to explain how human beings came to have tools and the significance of that development. But there are many ways to explaining this."

Carroll Pursell, White Heat. p. 29.

 

Next.

When

• Second week: stories about tools and technology. How tools do what they do?
• Third week: defining what technology is doing to us all.
• Fourth week: Despotic demands of hydraulic technology and fear.
• Fifth week: How people use tools as systemic technical implements.
• Sixth week: What allows tools to do what they do?
• Seventh week: The synergy of mechanisms that converged as automation.
• Eighth to tenth week debates: C. P. Snow's Two Cultures & your choices.
• Eleventh week: New industrialism and the power of emergent properties.
• Twelfth week: Three revolutions driving the present CBD transformation.

Weeks in further detail.

Authors:

Siry taped lectures.

The Two Cultures

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

| Postman–Tech | Postman–Television |

Where are we going next?

---

Core refers to

CORE: Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

Next

overview | weeks | related pages | what a tool complex is | animations | concepts | story

A learning objective for these weekly readings is for participants to examine by asking questions, writing and posting to the internet their responses to: the several ways to define technology and defining explicit examples of five to ten devices that have altered economic, social, and political relations in the past.

After week four students should be capable of using several readings and texts to describe verbally and in writing the examples of the three facets of technology and how tools form tool complexes with deep influences on human conduct or behavior.

Authors: a brief index of technology authorities and writers used, or quoted and foot noted on this web site.

Authors:

The Two Cultures

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

| Postman–Tech | Postman–Television |

Where are we going next?

Clarify

means to comprehend the meaning, application, influences and origins of tools & tool-use. To better understand the connection among tools, technology & techniques these web pages are a good starting point to interpret the information in both the Postman and Pursell books.

Clarify is the first of four steps in a process of learning well: Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

For the first three to four weeks the course is targeted on clarifying your understanding of a focus story (week two) translating and comparing stories (week three), contrasting the origins of enduring tool complexes (week four) and summarizing evidence found in three different authors (week five).

• Week: the story of Thamus

Technology is any sufficient knowledge of materials necessary to assemble or put things together properly in order to function effectively in achieving a desired outcome.

What do we mean specifically by technology?
Are artifacts evidence of technology?
How is technology defined precisely, or exactly?
When were important past periods of technical changes ?
		Acheulian hand ax.
Web of tools, techniques and related inventions.

 

• Week: Pursell question and the story of Prometheus

Pursell starts with the three facets of technology as the extension of human expression

Where are we going next?

  Understand

• Week Four:

Arnold Pacey opens with the Asian origins of inventions, designs, complexes and ideas.

• Week Five:

Carroll Pursell & how technology organizes our lives.

Neil Postman takes his cue from European transformation of Asian designs & devices.

The significance and quality of the conversational dialog that is essential for technology use & transfer

 

Comprehending and describing technical complexes.

The necessary dialog to make anything work well.

How is it technology has three sides and not just two?

Defining technology: what came first tools or science?

The great tectonic shift from mechanical to manufacturing was significant?

Tools and their relation to instruments, music and architecture.

Nanotech- technology and the coming revolution.

How pervasive is the widespread influence of automated technology?

Pursell & Pacey compared

Overview

Weeks
Organize | Reflect | Examine

Where are we going next?

Organize

means to list events in chronological order, create a recognizable order and comprehend
the relation of inventors, to inventions, to uses and the characteristics of their society.
A page to summarize organization as part of CORE, is "Technology . . is like a puzzle" with many missing pieces.

Carroll Pursell & how technology organizes our lives. Review

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

Pursell on the pervasiveness of organization.

How complicated is technology?

Three facets or aspects of tools.

Where do we find technological complexes?

Read for yourself the words of Frederick Winslow Taylor: The Principles of Scientific Management

How could tools be related to architecture and music?

The consequences of the Protestant ethos in technological innovation in Europe.

What is the best way to conceptualize technical changes in the past?

When did key inventions occur?

Is time really a technological creation or technical illusion?

Richard Arkwright and textiles.

The steam revolution in mechanization.

Technology as art

What is the meaning we discover in technology?

Railways as a prototype in creating our automated reality.

Pursell's analytical methods.

Pursell on the pervasiveness of organization.

Apply

A learning objective for these weekly readings is for participants to speak formally about how manufacturing emerged from hand work and in written and discursive dialog give over a dozen historical examples of key devices that form the basis of the industrial organization of society, emergence of a financial and commercial economy built on new dorms of capital and labor.

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

overview | weeks | related pages | what a tool complex is | animations | concepts | story

Where are we going next?

Reflect

Means to apply the three facets of inventions to changing social conditions,and explain how the problems specific tools solved and created, also caused specific social responses to intended consequences. Be able to explain in writing how these social conditions blocked or facilitated the spread of one technology with respect to another.

The web page to start here is "Technology disturbs" because you need to understand that there are unintended consequences to the deployment of new technology.

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

Reflection, involves a series of steps to thinking again or twice about first impressions.

Two Cultures.

Our beliefs about inventions.

What is essential to realize & know when analyzing technology?

What is the clash of values created by our constant reliance on technology?

Analyze

How many different ways does technology influence people and society?

A nearly incomprehensible world we inhabit?

What are Kranzberg's Laws concerning technological change?

How does technology change ?

Why is technical change not an advance?

What sort of pervasive influence does contemporary technology display?

Reflection, steps to.

One learning objective for these weekly readings is for participants is to present evidence from every author for or against C. P. Snow's claims and actively participate in a debate about how technology created or did not create a cultural divide that now hampers further progress.

Snow's words | Snow's essay interpreted | The Two Culture's context | The Redux Essay | Siry essay

 

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

overview | weeks | related pages | what a tool complex is | animations | concepts | story

Where are we going next?

Evaluate

Examine & evaluating designs

Means to judge the effects of inventions on the intended & unintended consequences of electricity, chemistry, and electronics on social behavior and either the reinforcement or undermining of cultural norms.

How the windmill works to provide electrical current.  

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

Where are we going next?

In retrospect a Summary

Critics of technology.

Technology is not always the apparent material objects we use.

The measures of what constitutes modern and modernity in technology.

What is modern man searching for?

An historian of technology says it isn't so.

Invisible aspects of technology.

Technology upsets the status quo & disturbs the existing order!

Technical confrontation with our own humanity.

Create effective responses to:

The ongoing and coming technological revolutions.

Evaluating the evidence about automation.

The challenges of global climate chaos.

Population and the "technical fix."

When things break down!

Broken defenses

Robots and robotics: filling the surrogate spaces.

Irony of automation with respect to gender equity.

The challenges of modern automation

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

overview | weeks | related pages | what a tool complex is | animations | concepts | story

Remember | Understand | Apply | Analyze | Evaluate | Create

 

Where are we going next?

Links for the class.

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

overview | weeks | related pages | what a tool complex is | animations | concepts | story

	readings
Basic information for the class. Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Evaluate & examine
Technology index landscape index words index map index photograph index
	My Schedule
	Search here

Navigating this site.
Where to start with technology?
A complete synopsis or summary of the class on one site: view this.
Vocabulary devoted to words you need to know.
Metaphors are crucial to use and interpret.
Methods are the means we have to test our assumptions.
Time periods in the history of technology.
A new grammar for our experiences may certainly be necessary to develop.

Where are we going next?

Material to consider if you want to do really well.

Tips to surviving in the course.

Interviews

Internet and research methods

Foreign Press a sampling.

landscape changes words index photograph index

 

American Academy for the Advancement of Science, AAAS: Atlas.

American Museum of Natural History (New York)

Boston Athenaeum

Inside the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA.

Smithsonian Institution: Washington D.C., science and technology page.

US Government on the web.

US Geological Survey, USGS.

University of California, Library.

University of Texas, Library.

National Public Radio, NPR.

New York Public Library.

Population Reference Bureau,

Research Facilities in Museums on the web.

Encyclopedia Britannica.

MET Office: Hadley Climate Centre in UK has recent press releases.

Some specific world wide web portals of entry to technical subjects:

√ Environmental topics portal for the web.

√ US Census Bureau (decennial census data)

√ World Resources Institute, WRI

√ Guide to some other reliable sites.

Next

Who |\ What |\ When |\ Where |\ How

	Weekly focus page
	Tulips as commercial investment tools?
	Tools of Toil: what to read.
	Tools are historical building blocks of technology.
Critics say that technology can be understood if tools have three facets.
Tools used in both Music and Architecture led to mechanization and automation.
Tools and the study of technology require us to reflect on the power of instruments,

Authors:

The Two Cultures

Pursell | Pacey–World | Postman | Head | Tenner |Pacey–meaning| Eberhart | Snow | Kaku | Boulding | Delillo | Kranzberg

| Postman–Technopoly | Postman–Television |

Technological change

Related pages

Who |\ What |\ When |\ Where |\ How

Clarify | Organize | Reflect | Examine

Remember | Understand | Apply | Analyze | Evaluate | Create

overview | weeks | related pages | what a tool complex is | animations | concepts | story

Technology Overview | Technology | Technology index

Dictionary | Vocabulary | Advanced Vocabulary | Words | fact vs fiction | Rare words | theme vs thesis | antonyms | dialectic | obscure words

Indexes: | Science | Genetics | Darwin | Site Analysis | Brief | Cases

nature index words index map index photograph index

Science Index | Sites | Population Index | Global Warming Index | Place Index | Brief

landscape index words index photograph index

 

When writing: 4 things to always consider | Writing Criteria: listed as a form for | Free writing

• Drop by the office if you have questions or concerns.

Rollins College
1000 Holt Avenue.
Winter Park, Fl. 32789
Joseph Siry, Ph.D.

 

Last Updated on: August 26, 2008–June 29, 2011, November 9, 2016 .