Thomas P. Hughes: Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (1983)

“A unique comparative history of the evolution of modern electric power systems. Networks of Power not only provides an accurate representation of large-scale technological change but also demonstrates that technology itself cannot be understood or directed unless placed in a cultural context. For Thomas Hughes, both the invention of the simplest devices (like the lightbulb itself) and the execution of the grandest schemes (such as harnessing the water power of the Bavarian Alps) fit into an overarching model of technological development. His narrative is an absorbing account of the creative genius, scientific achievements, engineering capabilities, managerial skills, and entrepreneurial risks behind one of the most commonplace amenities of the modern age.” (from the back cover)

The book was awarded the Dexter Prize by the Society for the History of Technology.

Publisher The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993
ISBN 0801846145, 9780801846144
474 pages

Review (John Neufeld, EH.net)
Review (Barry Barnes, Social Studies of Science)
Review (ZH, Innovation Group CNS UCSB)
Review (Stephen H. Cutcliffe, Technology and Culture)
Review (Mercedes Arroyo, Biblio 3W, in Spanish)

Publisher
Google books

PDF (updated on 2013-9-16 to OCR’d version)

monochrom, 3-10 (1994-1998) [German]

The mouthpiece of an international art-technology-philosophy collective founded in 1993, with its headquarters at Museumsquartier in Vienna.

Editor-in-chief: Johannes Grenzfurthner
Publisher Monochrom, Vienna
ISSN 1024-6738

Authors
Monochrom on Wikipedia

PDF (No. 3: media dings, 1994/95, 68 pp)
PDF (No. 4-5: media art damage, 1995/96, 104 pp)
PDF (No. 6-7: 100% error free high-density druckwerk, 1997, 112 pp)
PDF (No. 8-10: gebenedeit unter den illustrierten, 1998, 180 pp)

Later issues

Dolores L Augustine: Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945-1990 (2007)

“In Cold War-era East Germany, the German tradition of science-based technology merged with a socialist system that made technological progress central to its ideology. Technology became an important part of East German socialist identity—crucial to how Communists saw their system and how citizens saw their state. In Red Prometheus, Dolores Augustine examines the relationship between a dictatorial system and the scientific and engineering communities in East Germany from the end of the Second World War through the 1980s.

Drawing on newly opened archives and extensive interviews, and including many illlustrations and photographs that have never before been published, Augustine looks in detail at individual scientists’ interactions with the East German system, examining the effectiveness of their resistance against the party’s totalitarian impulses. She explains why many German scientists and engineers who were deported to the Soviet Union after World War II returned to East Germany rather than defecting to the capitalist West, traces scientists’ attempts to hold on to some aspects of professional autonomy, and describes challenges to their professional identity on the factory floor. Augustine examines the quality of science and technology produced under Communist rule, looking at failed research projects and clashing cultures of innovation. She looks at technological myth-building in science fiction and propaganda. She explores individual career strategies, including the role played by gender in high-tech professions, and the ways that both enterprises and individuals responded to increasing state and party control of research during the 1980s. We cannot understand the economic choices made by East Germany, Augustine argues, unless we understand the cultural values reflected in the East German belief in technology as indispensable to progress and industrial development.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2007
Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology series
ISBN 0262012367, 9780262012362
381 pages

Publisher

PDF