Skip to content
Description
By: Edward Jones-Imhotep
A cultural history of technological breakdown, social order, and the self in the modern Atlantic World.
The Broken Machine explores the intertwined histories of breaking machines, social order, and the self in the modern Atlantic world. Edward Jones-Imhotep reveals how breakdowns are not the kinds of objects we imagine. More than just material failures or social disruptions, since the eighteenth-century, breakdowns served as moments for defining a modern technological self and the core values of social order in Western democracies: what kinds of people belonged to it, what virtues they should possess, and who stood outside it.
Tracing this politics of breakdown and belonging across two centuries and two continents, the book rewrites five well-known episodes in the history of technology—influential histories that we thought we knew: the politics of the guillotine during the French Revolution; the causes of railway accidents and the rise of “systems” as a tool of self-responsibility and self-governance in Victorian Britain; the surprising antebellum history of breakdown in American slave cultures; the Gantt Chart’s origins as a Progressive-Era tool for linking failure as a condition of industrial machinery to failure as a kind of person in the United States; and, finally, the electronic malfunctions during the Cold War, which helped define the rational selves underpinning Western democracy.
A cultural history of technological breakdown, social order, and the self in the modern Atlantic World.
The Broken Machine explores the intertwined histories of breaking machines, social order, and the self in the modern Atlantic world. Edward Jones-Imhotep reveals how breakdowns are not the kinds of objects we imagine. More than just material failures or social disruptions, since the eighteenth-century, breakdowns served as moments for defining a modern technological self and the core values of social order in Western democracies: what kinds of people belonged to it, what virtues they should possess, and who stood outside it.
Tracing this politics of breakdown and belonging across two centuries and two continents, the book rewrites five well-known episodes in the history of technology—influential histories that we thought we knew: the politics of the guillotine during the French Revolution; the causes of railway accidents and the rise of “systems” as a tool of self-responsibility and self-governance in Victorian Britain; the surprising antebellum history of breakdown in American slave cultures; the Gantt Chart’s origins as a Progressive-Era tool for linking failure as a condition of industrial machinery to failure as a kind of person in the United States; and, finally, the electronic malfunctions during the Cold War, which helped define the rational selves underpinning Western democracy.
You may also like
熱銷中 Top Trending
Dog Man 14: Dog Man: Big Jim Believes: A Graphic Novel (Dog Man #14)
Sale priceHK$85.00
Regular priceHK$150.00
In stock
Dragon Masters #30 Vortex of the Chaos Dragon (Branches) (Tracey West)
Sale priceHK$55.00
Regular priceHK$69.00
In stock
Dragon Masters #29 (正版) Magic of the Wizard Dragon (Branches) (Tracey West)
Sale priceHK$48.00
Regular priceHK$69.00
In stock
Dragon Masters #28 (正版) Night of the Dream Dragon (Branches) (Tracey West)
Sale priceHK$48.00
Regular priceHK$69.00
In stock
Beast Quest Ice and Fire (15 Books) (Adam Blade)
Sale priceHK$346.00
Regular priceHK$1,257.90
In stock
Magic Tree House Fact Tracker Graphic Novel: Space
Sale priceFrom HK$70.00
Regular priceHK$110.00
In stock
National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of the World
Sale priceFrom HK$96.00
Regular priceHK$150.00
In stock