Paul E. Ceruzzi: Internet Alley. High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945-2005 (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · history of technology, internet, military, technology
Much of the world’s Internet management and governance takes place in a corridor extending west from Washington, DC, through northern Virginia toward Washington Dulles International Airport. Much of the United States’ military planning and analysis takes place here as well. At the center of that corridor is Tysons Corner—an unincorporated suburban crossroads once dominated by dairy farms and gravel pits. Today, the government contractors and high- tech firms—companies like DynCorp, CACI, Verisign, and SAIC—that now populate this corridor have created an “Internet Alley” off the Washington Beltway. In Internet Alley, Paul Ceruzzi examines this compact area of intense commercial development and describes its transformation into one of the most dynamic and prosperous regions in the country.
Ceruzzi explains how a concentration of military contractors carrying out weapons analysis, systems engineering, operations research, and telecommunications combined with suburban growth patterns to drive the region’s development. The dot-com bubble’s burst was offset here, he points out, by the government’s growing national security-related need for information technology. Ceruzzi looks in detail at the nature of the work carried out by these government contractors and how it can be considered truly innovative in terms of both technology and management.
Today in Tysons Corner, clusters of sleek new office buildings housing high-technology companies stand out against the suburban landscape, and the upscale Tysons Galleria Mall is neighbor to a government-owned radio tower marked by a sign warning visitors not to photograph or sketch it. Ceruzzi finds that a variety of perennially relevant issues intersect here, making it both a literal and figurative crossroads: federal support of scientific research, the shift of government activities to private contractors, local politics of land use, and the postwar movement from central cities to suburbs.
Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262033747, 9780262033749
Length 242 pages
Carroll W. Pursell: The Machine in America: A Social History of Technology (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · history of technology, internet, technology
From the medieval farm implements used by the first colonists to the invisible links of the Internet, the history of technology in America is a history of society as well. Arguing that “the tools and processes we use are a part of our lives, not simply instruments of our purpose,” historian Carroll Pursell analyzes technology’s impact on the lives of women and men, on their work, politics, and social relationships — and how, in turn, people influence technological development.
Pursell shows how both the idea of progress and the mechanical means to harness the forces of nature developed and changed as they were brought from the Old World to the New. He describes the ways in which American industrial and agricultural technology began to take on a distinctive shape as it adapted and extended the technical base of the industrial revolution. He discusses the innovation of an American system of manufactures and the mechanization of agriculture; new systems of mining, lumbering, and farming, which helped conquer and define the West; and the technologies that shaped the rise of cities.
In the second edition of The Machine in America, Pursell brings this classic history up to date with a revised chapter on war technology and new discussions on information technology, globalization, and the environment.
Publisher JHU Press, 2007
ISBN 0801885795, 9780801885792
Length 398 pages
Keywords and phrases
industrial revolution, Oliver Evans, Native Americans, gristmill, World War II, steam engines, Arpanet, postmodern, scientific management, Benjamin Butterworth, California, blast furnaces, traction engine, England, Scientific American, wrought iron, Herbert Hoover, sash saw, cold war, technology and hegemony
More info (publisher)
More info (google books)
Christopher May (ed.): Key Thinkers for the Information Society (2003)
Filed under book | Tags: · globalisation, history of technology, information society, internet, technological determinism
With the aim of widening current perspectives on the information society, each contributor introduces a particular social theorist and discusses the way in which their insights can be reintroduced into debates regarding the social, political and cultural impact of information and communication technologies. Theorists include: Walter Benjamin; Murray Edeleman; Jacques Ellul; Harold Innes; Lewis Mumford; Karl Polanyi; Eric Elmer Scattachneider and Raymond Williams.
Published by Routledge, 2003
ISBN 0415296722, 9780415296724
194 pages
Key terms:
information society, Lewis Mumford, Walter Benjamin, Harold Innis, megalopolis, Karl Polanyi, technological determinism, information age, digital divide, Wolin, Jacques Ellul, Elmer Eric Schattschneider, industrial revolution, information revolution, Frankfurt School, globalisation, Marxist, Internet, postmodern, history of technology
PDF (updated on 2012-8-11)
Comment (0)