{"title":"Eric Schatzberg","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"wings-of-wood-wings-of-metal-book-eric-schatzberg-9780691087733","title":"Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal","description":"It is an article of faith that technological change moves steadily and logically, with new technologies taking over when old ones are shown to be inferior. We believe that technological change, despite adjustment pains, always represents progress. Eric Schatzberg shows here that this process is not always so logical; even successful technologies can be shaped in strange ways by culture and ideology. He demonstrates this by revealing the cultural biases behind the shift from wood to metal in American aircraft between the World Wars. Schatzberg shows that American aeronautical engineers and airplane designers were swayed by the symbolism of airplane materials that linked metal with technological progress and wood with preindustrial craft traditions. This symbolism encouraged the aeronautical community to focus research and development on metal airplanes at the expense of promising projects involving wood--despite the fact that other countries continued to produce highly successful aircraft with wood through the end of World War II. According to Schatzberg, technical personnel in the American military played the key role in this process. They had little evidence for metal's superiority, but used their dominant influence to press the case that metal was the wave of the future and that airplanes would inevitably follow ships and abandon wood. Generously illustrated, tightly argued, and meticulously researched, Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal shows clearly that culture and ideology help determine the most basic characteristics of modern industrial technologies. The book also underlines the historically powerful influence of the military on twentieth-century technology.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50356502331665,"sku":"CIN0691087733G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691087733.jpg?v=1751295181"},{"product_id":"technology-book-eric-schatzberg-9780226583976","title":"Technology","description":"In modern life, technology is everywhere. Yet as a concept, technology is a mess. In popular discourse, technology is little more than the latest digital innovations. Scholars do little better, offering up competing definitions that include everything from steelmaking to singing. In Technology: Critical History of a Concept, Eric Schatzberg explains why technology is so difficult to define by examining its three thousand year history, one shaped by persistent tensions between scholars and technical practitioners. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, scholars have tended to hold technicians in low esteem, defining technical practices as mere means toward ends defined by others. Technicians, in contrast, have repeatedly pushed back against this characterization, insisting on the dignity, creativity, and cultural worth of their work.    The tension between scholars and technicians continued from Aristotle through Francis Bacon and into the nineteenth century. It was only in the twentieth century that modern meanings of technology arose: technology as the industrial arts, technology as applied science, and technology as technique. Schatzberg traces these three meanings to the present day, when discourse about technology has become pervasive, but confusion among the three principal meanings of technology remains common. He shows that only through a humanistic concept of technology can we understand the complex human choices embedded in our modern world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000238539025,"sku":"NIN9780226583976","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/022658397X.jpg?v=1751164260"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-eric-schatzberg.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}