The Shock of the Old is right up my alley. Clearly I can't spend 17 paragraphs talking about these vital points because if I were truly wise enough to make them, I'd have written the book myself. The Shock of the Old spans 212 pages and I have dog-eared 17 of them.
But hereabouts, each dog ear represents something vital, something I feel I must tell you about when I review it. Bookbag loved it and if you prefer a historical approach that favours the way people lived over the biographies of kings and queens, you will too.Ī good indicator of how much I enjoyed reading a book is the number of dog ears I made. Interweaving political, economic and cultural history, it will show what it means to think critically about technology and its importance.Summary: Interesting, accessible and full of simple common sense, it's quite shocking to think the perspective offered in The Shock of the Old is actually new, dangerous and radical. In taking this approach, "The Shock of the Old" challenges the idea that we live in an era of ever increasing change and so dismisses naivetes about 'the information age'. It, therefore, reassesses the significance of, for example, the Pill and IT, and shows the continued importance of technology, such as corrugated iron and sewing machines.
Its thrust is that for the full picture of the history of technology we need to know not about what a few people invented, but about what everyday people used - and when they actually used things, if it was a long time after invention. Whereas standard histories of technology give tired old accounts of the usual inventions - planes, bombs - "The Shock of the Old" is based on a different idea. The first proper global account of the place of technology in twentieth century history, this brilliant, thought-provoking book will radically revise our understanding of the relationship between technology and society. Print The Shock of the Old - technology and Global History since 1900
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