I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as the New. It hobbled up on new crutches which no one had ever seen before and stank of new smells of decay which no one had ever smelt before. Bertolt Brecht (1939), from ‘Parade of the Old New’, in Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913–1956, John Willett and Ralph Manheim (eds) (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 323 (Location 49)
Note: holy shit
Much of what is written on the history of technology is for boys of all ages. This book is a history for grown-ups of all genders. We have lived with technology for a long time, and collectively we know a lot about it. From economists to ecologists, from antiquarians to historians, people have had different views about the material world around us and how it has changed. Yet too often the agenda for discussing the past, present and future of technology is set by the promoters of new technologies. (Location 54)
It leads to a rethinking of our notion of technological time, mapped as it is on innovation-based timelines. (Location 92)
The new history will be surprisingly different. For example, steam power, held to be characteristic of the industrial revolution, was not only absolutely but relatively more important in 1900 than in 1800. (Location 95)
Note: refutes s-curve bullshit
As Bruno Latour has aptly noted, modern time, where this behaved as moderns believed, has never existed. Time was always jumbled up, in the pre-modern era, the post-modern era and the modern era. (Location 105)
Since the late 1960s many more bicycles were produced globally each year than cars. (Location 108)
The horse made a greater contribution to Nazi conquest than the V2. (Location 115)
Note: lol wut
A central feature of use-based history, and a new history of invention, is that alternatives exist for nearly all technologies: there are multiple military technologies, means of generating electricity, powering a motor car, storing and manipulating information, cutting metal or roofing a building. (Location 116)
One particularly important feature of use-based history of technology is that it can be genuinely global. It includes all places that use technology, not just the small number of places where invention and innovation is concentrated. (Location 121)
Among them are the new technologies of poverty. They are missed because the poor world is thought of as having traditional local technologies, a lack of rich-world technologies, and/or has been subject to imperial technological violence. When we think of cities we should think of bidonvilles as well as Alphaville; we should think not just about the planned cities of Le Corbusier, but the unplanned shanty towns, built not by great contractors, but by millions of self-builders over many years. (Location 126)
‘creole’ technologies, technologies transplanted from their place of origin finding uses on a greater scale elsewhere. (Location 130)
A consequence of the new approach is that we shift attention from the new to the old, the big to the small, the spectacular to the mundane, the masculine to the feminine, the rich to the poor. But at its core is a rethinking of the history of all technology, including the big, spectacular, masculine high technologies of the rich white world. (Location 131)
The innovation-centric view also misleads us as to the nature of scientists and engineers. It presents them, as they present themselves, as creators, designers, researchers. Yet the majority have always been mainly concerned with the operation and maintenance of things and processes; with the uses of things, not their invention or development. (Location 147)
time. Present visions of the future display a startling, unselfconscious lack of originality. (Location 152)
the great ironclad battleships, Nobel’s explosives, the bomber aircraft and the atomic bomb were so powerful that they too would force the world to make peace. New technologies of many sorts would emancipate the downtrodden. (Location 154)
Note: i think this is wrong. this is about permanent modes of human behaviour rather than the persistence of old technologies.
From this literature, the work of low- and middle-ranking intellectuals and propagandists, ranging from, say, the books of H. G. Wells to the press releases of NASA’s PR officials, (Location 167)
Note: Ffs
For example, we all know that while the use of things is widely distributed through societies, ultimate control of things and their use has been highly concentrated, within societies and between societies. Ownership, and other forms of authority, on the one hand, and use on the other, have been radically separated. Most people in the world live in houses that do not belong to them, work in workplaces belonging to others, with tools that belong to others, and indeed many of the things they apparently own are often tied to credit agreements. Within societies, states and/or small groups have had disproportionate control; some societies have much more stuff than others. In many places of the world much is owned by foreigners. Things belong to particular people in ways which technology does not. (Location 178)
Water-treatment and supply systems topped the list of (Location 231)
