White
Heat,
Carroll Pursell
spectrum

Contents
Butcher's
Blade (0utlined)
Out
of the Loop
Step
Right Up
Makes
No Sense
Welcome
to the Club
War
in the Age of Intelligent Machines
Dirt
and Disorder
Information

Technology is a spectrum
This spectrum of the means used in production is often employed as an indicator of development in different nations.
Machinery involves moving parts and is often a relation among gears and power sources.

The Archimedian device for lifting water: Archimede's screw; from level "N" up into the chamber "A" .
Butcher's
Blade
Examining the relationship
between human beings and their technology, and shows how much technology
can reveal about the society in which it develops. We see how technology
--as a systematic functioning of instruments to
attain some purpose-- like language, is fundamental to social
organization and is..., one of the enduring symbols of our humanity.
Sample
of his ideas
Makes
No Sense
"Investigation of the role
of technology in the workplace. The transfer of the artisan's skills
to a machine with unskilled' operator caused a massive shift in labour
relations. Combined with the management theories of mass production,
the worker became another replaceable component in the factory, with
identity and creative input severely limited."
Go
to chapter
Step
Right Up
"Shows how technology is
inextricably involved in our perception of the world around us, particularly
that of time and space. The technology with which we organize the world,
itself organizes us, just as our culture participates in technology
at the same time as being influenced by it."
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to chapter
Dirt
and Disorder
Reveals "the way in which
technology has often developed in tandem with notions of morality in
society. The sewer systems which take away the waste products from the
great cities of Europe, are at once a metaphor for the techniques of
social control and an actual part of the process. Technology has been
instrumental in the human 'conquest' of nature, the implementation of
rational structures on the irrational, and as such, is inseparable from
our conception of ourselves."
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Welcome
to the Club
Spectrum
Critic of mechanization
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