Siegfried Giedion: Mechanization Takes Command (1948)
Filed under book | Tags: · agriculture, architecture, furniture, history of technology, industry, machine, movement, philosophy, philosophy of technology, production, technology
“First published in 1948, Mechanization Takes Command is an examination of mechanization and its effects on everyday life. A monumental figure in the field of architectural history, Siegfried Giedion traces the evolution and resulting philosophical implications of such disparate innovations as the slaughterhouse, the Yale lock, the assembly line, tractors, ovens, and “comfort” as defined by advancements in furniture design. A groundbreaking text when originally published, Giedion’s pioneering work remains an important contribution to architecture, philosophy, and technology studies.”
Publisher Oxford University Press, New York, 1948
Third printing, 1970
743 pages
via babyalanturing
Reviews: John E. Sawyer (The Journal of Economic History, 1949), Harry Elmer Barnes (American Journal of Sociology, 1949), William F. Ogburn (The American Historical Review, 1948), Henry Guerlac (American Quarterly, 1949), Donald Horton (American Sociological Review, 1948), Paul Zucker (The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1949), Arthur P. Molella (Technology and Culture, 2002), Tom Vanderbilt (Bookforum, 2010), Bryan E. Norwood (Culture Machine, 2015).
PDF (removed on 2014-4-21 upon request of the University of Minnesota Press)
Comment (1)Journal of Peer Production, No. 4: Value and Currency (2014)
Filed under journal | Tags: · 3d printing, bitcoin, commons, economics, money, p2p, production, software, value
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“In the context of earlier understandings of peer production, the question of value and even more of currency has been rather marginal. This issue of the Journal of Peer Production (JoPP) demonstrates that theories and practices of value and currency are moving into the foreground. There has been a veritable explosion of experiments with currency and also a continuing metrics creep in many peer projects and beyond. More fundamentally, though, the question of value and how it circulates through a collective body is central to any mature theory of social organisation.” (from the Introduction)
With contributions by Annika Richterich, Alexandre Mallard, Cécile Méadel and Francesca Musiani, Quinn DuPont, Johan Söderberg, and comments by Amir Taaki, Beat Weber, Michel Bauwens, and Miguel Said Vieira & Primavera De Filippi.
Edited by Nathaniel Tkacz, Nicolas Mendoza and Francesca Musiani
Published in April 2014
Open Access
ISSN 2213-5316
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Comment (0)Ivan Illich: Gender (1982)
Filed under book | Tags: · commons, economics, economy, gender, labour, marxism, medicine, men, production, rent, sex, sexuality, women, work
“The break with the past, which has been described by others as the transition to a capitalist mode of production, I describe here as the transition from the aegis of gender to the regime of sex.” Ivan Illich insists that we survey attitudes to male and female in both industrial society and its antecedents in order to recover a lost ‘art of living’. He argues that only a truly radical scrutiny of scarcity, with special attention in this study to the sexes and society, past and present, can prevent an intensification of this grim predicament.
Publisher Marion Boyars, London, 1982
ISBN 9780714520902
192 pages
Reviews: Arlie Russell Hochschild (New York Times, 1983), Ninna Nyberg-Sørensen (Acta Sociologica, 1987).
EPUB (updated on 2019-10-1)
PDF (30 MB, added on 2019-10-1)