The Numerati
"Steve Baker puts his finger on perhaps the most important cultural trend today: the explosion of data about every aspect of our world and the rise of applied math gurus who know how to use it." --Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine (Wired Magazine ) An urgent look at how a global math elite is predicting and altering our behavior -- at work, at the mall, and in bed Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, flip channels, drive through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the twenty-first century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data to dissect us and map out our next steps. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior -- what we buy, how we vote -- without our even realizing it. In this tour de force of original reporting and analysis, journalist Stephen Baker provides us with a fascinating guide to the world we're all entering -- and to the people controlling that world. The Numerati have infiltrated every realm of human affairs, profiling us as workers, shoppers, patients, voters, potential terrorists -- and lovers. The implications are vast. Our privacy evaporates. Our bosses can monitor and measure our every move (then reward or punish us). Politicians can find the swing voters among us, by plunking us all into new political groupings with names like "Hearth Keepers" and "Crossing Guards." It can sound scary. But the Numerati can also work on our behalf, diagnosing an illness before we're aware of the symptoms, or even helping us find our soul mate. Surprising, enlightening, and deeply relevant, The Numerati shows how a powerful new endeavor -- the mathematical modeling of humanity -- will transform every aspect of our lives. STEPHEN BAKER has written for BusinessWeek for over twenty years, covering Mexico and Latin America, the Rust Belt, European technology, and a host of other topics, including blogs, math, and nanotechnology. But he's always considered himself a foreign correspondent. This, he says, was especially useful as he met the Numerati. "While I came from the world of words, they inhabited the symbolic realms of math and computer science. This was foreign to me. My reporting became an anthropological mission." Baker has written for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe. He won an Overseas Press Club Award for his portrait of the rising Mexican auto industry. He is the coauthor of blogspotting.net, featured by the New York Times as one of fifty blogs to watch.
A History of Aviation Safety
There have been countless books written on the history of aviation, beginning in 1896, but there has not been a book that tells the story of the history of aviation safety from its origins to the present day until now. This book features the story of the United States airline system aviation safety history from its beginnings in 1926 to the present day. A common theme appears throughout this history: a technological solution is already available to solve a safety problem before it is implemented into the safety system. This book also tells the story of aviation safety in the early years of flight, including the era of the Wright brothers, the period of the barnstormers, and the development of the U.S. air mail system, which laid the foundation for the U.S. airline system. Significant episodes in the history of aviation safety are included to provide a perspective of the enormous range of safety that has occurred throughout aviation history: crossing the Atlantic Ocean from 1919 to 1934; the Cleveland air races from 1929 to 1949; the Eighth Air Force in World War II; the X-15 rocket plane; the Space Shuttle; and the history of General Aviation safety.
A Splintered History of Wood
A Splintered History of Wood is a passionate and personal exploration of nature's greatest gift: wood. In the successful tradition of books such as Salt and Cod, writer and carpenter Spike Carlsen explores the history, versatility, and special appeal of something we use everyday--but take for granted--in this comprehensive and dynamic history of wood's global impact and its personal significance to people in all walks of life.
Pornnovation?
From the depiction of female genitalia in a cave painting to the latest Internet porn, technology, art, and sexuality have always been closely linked. So closely, in fact, that the development of emergent technologies -- photography, motion pictures, and the Internet -- has been largely fueled and funded by pornography. As J. G. Ballard once prophesied, "Sex times technology equals the future." In the spirit of Ballard's epiphany, an eclectic group of writers, theorists, artists, and philosophers gathered to speak at the 2007 Arse Elektronika, an annual conference hosted by the celebrated art-tech-philosophy collective monochrom. The talks are collected in Pr0nnovation? Lively and wide-ranging, they explore the porn-tech connection historically and in the present day, covering topics such as sexual privacy in the online world, DIY pornography, the impact of digital effects on adult films, sex toys of Granny's day, and software interfaces for sexual interaction. Timothy Archibald, author and photographer of the acclaimed Sex Machines, contributes color photographs.
Evidence
Eight distinguished experts from a wide range of disciplines consider the nature and the use of evidence in the modern world. Peter Lipton begins the book by analysing evidence in general philosophical terms. Carlo Ginzurg then examines the ambiguities of historical evidence. Vincent Courtillot analyses the evidence for cataclysmic geological change. Monica Grady considers the evidence for life in space. Brian Greene discusses superstring theory and the quest for a unified theory of the universe. Philip Dawid explores the uses and abuses of statistical evidence in landmark legal cases while Cherie Booth looks at the role of evidence in domestic and international law. In the final chapter Karen Armstrong considers the role of evidence in religious belief.
American Milling Machine Builders 1820-1920
Continuing the pattern set by American Lathe Builders and American Planer, Shaper and Slotter Builders, this is the first book to identify American builders of milling machines and the products they invented circa 1818 to the development of the "modern" milling machine circa 1920. Early versions of other American machine tools were largely copied from European, especially British, machines. The milling machine, however, was an American development. Built first for the firearms and sewing machine industries, it proved to be much more productive than other methods, and soon held a major place in all high-production American machine shops. The book lists more than 300 makers and contains over 1,400 illustrations taken from original catalogs and contemporary periodicals. These trace the development of the milling machine from a crude, light weight machine to very large millers capable of machining parts the size of boxcars and weighing many tons. Attachments such as dividing heads, vises, etc., are also covered.
Connections
How did the popularity of underwear in the twelfth century lead to the invention of the printing press?How did the waterwheel evolve into the computer?How did the arrival of the cannon lead eventually to the development of movies?In this highly acclaimed and bestselling book, James Burke brilliantly examines the ideas, inventions, and coincidences that have culminated in the major technological advances of today. With dazzling insight, he untangles the pattern of interconnecting events: the accidents of time, circumstance, and place that gave rise to the major inventions of the world.Says Burke, "My purpose is to acquaint the reader with some of the forces that have caused change in the past, looking in particular at eight innovations -- the computer, the production line, telecommunications, the airplane, the atomic bomb, plastics, the guided rocket, and television -- which may be most influential in structuring our own futures....Each one of these is part of a family of similar devices, and is the result of a sequence of closely connected events extending from the ancient world until the present day. Each has enormous potential for humankind's benefit -- or destruction."Based on a popular TV documentary series, Connections is a fascinating scientific detective story of the inventions that changed history -- and the surprising links that connect them.
Flushed
"The unsung hero of human history was, of course, the Brain of Drains, the Hub of Tubs, the Power of Showers, the Brewer of Sewers...the humble plumber." -- W. Hodding Carter When we consider the amenities that really make a difference in our well-being, surely good plumbing must rank near the top. But rarely have we taken the time to appreciate the engineering marvels that bring clean water into our homes with the turn of a tap and the flip of a lever. Until now. Witty, anecdotal, and thoroughly entertaining, Flushed chronicles the long and notable history of plumbing, while following Hodding Carter's travels and travails around the most underappreciated pillar of civilization. It's a winning combination of history, science, and firsthand experience -- a book that will both entertain and educate those who have never contemplated the hidden intricacies of this miracle of everyday technology.
Sound
This highly informative and fascinating book brings together perspectives on sound by leading experts from a wide variety of disciplines. These include anthropology, physiology, zoology, physics, music, phonetics and film. Through crossing disciplinary boundaries, the volume hopes to inspire a richer and more creative approach to the acoustic world. Whilst aiming for a general audience and presented in an accessible style, several chapters also represent important contributions within their own disciplines or will serve as core texts for students. The sequence of nine chapters passes from cultural perspectives on silence, via the physics of sound, physiology of the ear, songs of birds, and sounds of human speech, to music. From the reconstruction of medieval music, via twentieth-century composition and the music of the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea, the volume concludes with the role of sound in film. Life will never sound the same again.
Introduction to Computer Fundamentals
This book offers a concise learning material to boost computer literacy. It is the best tool to enlighten its readers surmount the difficulties involved in coping up with the fast pace of the endless computer evolution. This includes the exposure of some of the vital fundamental concepts in modern computing. This book has been prepared for you to uncover several confusing concepts that pose a big challenge to computer learners and users. I am coming from both educational and professional standpoint to better alienate the hinges that serve as obstacles to high-tech solutions to everyone.
Welding Pocket Reference
Featuring updated charts dealing with the most common situations welding workers face on the job, this comprehensive, pocket-sized reference is based on recommendations from working professionals and covers welding symbols and definitions, types of joints and welds, typical welding station configurations, oxygen cylinders, arc-welding charts, U.S metric measures, and more.
Memory
Memory is both a private, personal phenomenon and a collective interpretation of history by society. The concept of memory has long intrigued scientists, philosophers, and scholars alike. This fascinating volume explores some of the many ways that individuals and societies remember, forget, and commemorate events of the past. The collection of eight essays, representing some of the most engaging contemporary voices in the arts and sciences, takes a unique interdisciplinary approach to address the relationships between individual experience and collective memory. Many would expect scientists to be concerned with studying only the mental and physical processes involved in remembering; and humanities scholars to be interested in only the products of memory, such as literature, art, and music. Memory exposes the falseness of such a dichotomy by illustrating the insights into memory that can be gained by juxtaposing the complementary perspectives of specialists venturing past the normal boundaries of their disciplines. The authors represent fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, creative writing, neuroscience, social history, and medicine; but explore concepts beyond their areas of notoriety, providing textured, complete, and sometimes personal views of the meaning of memory. This thought-provoking and unusual collection will delight a wide variety of readers. Contributors: Richard Sennett, Catherine Hall, A. S. Byatt, Jack Goody, Juliet Mitchell, Barbara Wilson, Steven Rose, Terrence Sejnowski.
Shaping Science And Technology Policy
With scientific progress occurring at a breathtaking pace, science and technology policy has never been more important than it is today. Yet there is a very real lack of public discourse about policy-making, and government involvement in science remains shrouded in both mystery and misunderstanding. Who is making choices about technology policy, and who stands to win or lose from these choices? What criteria are being used to make decisions and why? Does government involvement help or hinder scientific research? Shaping Science and Technology Policy brings together an exciting and diverse group of emerging scholars, both practitioners and academic experts, to investigate current issues in science and technology policy. Essays explore such topics as globalization, the shifting boundary between public and private, informed consent in human participation in scientific research, intellectual property and university science, and the distribution of the costs and benefits of research. Contributors: Charlotte Augst, Grant Black, Mark Brown, Kevin Elliott, Patrick Feng, Pamela M. Franklin, Carolyn Gideon, Ten矇 N. Hamilton, Brian A. Jackson, Shobita Parthasarathy, Jason W. Patton, A. Abigail Payne, Bhaven Sampat, Christian Sandvig, Sheryl Winston Smith, Michael Whong-Barr
Six Sigma
The extraordinary breakthrough management program--heralded by GE, Motorola, and AlliedSignal--that is sweeping corporate America with its unprecedented ability to achieve superior financial results. Six Sigma is the most powerful breakthrough management tool ever devised, promising increased market share, cost reductions, and dramatic improvements in bottom-line profitability for companies of any size. The darling of Wall Street, it has become the mantra of Fortune 500 boardrooms around the world because it works. What is Six Sigma? It is first and foremost a business process that enables companies to increase profits dramatically by streamlining operations, improving quality, and eliminating defects or mistakes in everything a company does, from filling out purchase orders to manufacturing airplane engines. While traditional quality programs have focused on detecting and correcting defects, Six Sigma encompasses something broader: It provides specific methods to re-create the process itself so that defects are never produced in the first place. Most companies operate at a three- to four-sigma level, where the cost of defects is roughly 20 to 30 percent of revenues. By approaching Six Sigma--fewer than one defect per 3.4 million opportunities--the cost of quality drops to less than 1 percent of sales. This is because the highest quality also results in the lowest costs. When GE reduced its costs from 20 percent to less than 10 percent, it saved a billion dollars in just two years--money that goes directly to the bottom line. This is the reason Wall Street and corporations as diverse as Sony, Ford, Nokia, Texas Instruments, Canon, Hitachi, Lockheed Martin, American Express, Toshiba, DuPont, and Polaroid have embarked on corporate-wide Six Sigma programs. Six Sigma should be of paramount importance to every forward-thinking executive and manager determined to make their company world-class in their industry.
What the Dormouse Said
"This makes entertaining reading. Many accounts of the birth of personal computing have been written, but this is the first close look at the drug habits of the earliest pioneers." --New York Times Most histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoff's landmark book is about the culture and consciousness behind the first PCs--the culture being counter- and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. It's a brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and '70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into a means for freeing minds and information. In these pages one encounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Cap'n Crunch, est and LSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiring book by one of the smartest technology writers around.
A Clone of Your Own?
Someday soon (if it has not happened already in secret), the first cloned human being will be born and mankind will embark on a scientific and moral journey whose destination cannot be foretold. In A Clone of Your Own?, Arlene Judith Klotzko describes the new world of possibilities that can be glimpsed over the horizon. In a lucid and engaging narrative, she explains that the technology to create clones of living beings already exists. inaugurated in 1996 by Dolly, the sheep, the first mammal clone formed from a single adult cell, Dolly was the culmination of a long scientific quest to understand the puzzle of our development from one cell into a complex organism--the outcome of a "fantastic experiment" envisioned six decades before her birth. The human fascination with cloning goes beyond science and its extraordinary medical implications. In riveting prose full of allusions to art, music, and theatre, Klotzko explains why the prospect of human cloning triggers our deepest hopes and our darkest fears and forces us to ponder what it would mean to have a "clone of our own." Readers interested in the legal and ethical ramifications of cloning and desirous of a clear explanation of the science involved will not want to be without A Clone of Your Own?. Arlene Judith Klotzko, a bioethicist and lawyer, is Writer in Residence at the Science Museum, London. She is also a Visiting Scholar in Bioethics at the Windeyer Institute, University College, London. She provides commentary on science, ethics and policy for television and radio in the U.S., UK and worldwide through Sky News, BBC World Television News, Bloomberg Television, Voice of America and the BBC World Service.
Ways of Communicating
Ways of Communicating is a stimulating exploration of the single most powerful force that gives humankind its control over the natural world--the communication among us. So integral a part of everyday life as to be taken for granted, yet so multi-faceted as to be notoriously slippery to describe and analyze, the world of communication is treated here from the standpoint of the arts quite as much as the sciences. Speech and body language, fiction and music, communication by neural networks within the brain and by satellite around the globe, all are considered together to give a fascinating view of this elusive aspect of our common humanity. Contributors include P.N. Johnson-Laird on The Nature of Communication; Horace Barlow on The Brain; Patrick Bateson on Animals; Noam Chomsky on Language; D.H. Mellor on Truth; David Lodge on The Novel; Jonathan Miller on Communication without Words; Alexander Goehr on Music; and John Alvey on Telecommunications.
Verification Methodology Manual
Provides a reference methodology that can be adopted by designers and verification engineers for all types of System-on-a-Chip projects. With authors from ARM(R) and Synopsys(R), it combines ARM's expertise in the verification of complex, configurable IP from transaction-level SystemC to timing-critical register-transfer level (RTL) implementation, and Synopsys' strength in delivering an integrated RTL and system verification platform, including tools and verification IP. Verification Methodology Manual for SystemVerilog describes SystemVerilog language features relevant to functional verification and provides a blueprint for a robust, scalable verification architecture based on industry best practices. This book also specifies a standard set of libraries for assertions and commonly used verification functions, such as stimulus generation, simulation control and coverage analysis, to help implement the recommended methodology. The Manual can help SoC development teams achieve faster and more effective design verification. It also guides verification IP providers to follow a consistent and well-documented architecture, enabling end users to easily integrate verification IP from multiple sources.
Dark Light
The modern world imagines that the invention of electricity was greeted with great enthusiasm. But in 1879 Americans reacted to the advent of electrification with suspicion and fear. Forty years after Thomas Edison invented the incandescent bulb, only 20 percent of American families had wired their homes. Meanwhile, electrotherapy emerged as a popular medical treatment for everything from depression to digestive problems. Why did Americans welcome electricity into their bodies even as they kept it from their homes? And what does their reaction to technological innovation then have to teach us about our reaction to it today? In Dark Light, Linda Simon offers the first cultural history that delves into those questions, using newspapers, novels, and other primary sources. Tracing fifty years of technological transformation, from Morse's invention of the telegraph to Roentgen's discovery of X-rays, she has created a revealing portrait of an anxious age.
The Six Sigma Project Planner
Project management strategies for meeting Six Sigma project goals--on time and on budget The Six Sigma Project Planner shows Six Sigma Black Belts and Green Belts how to use project management tools to complete Six Sigma improvements on time and on budget. The Planner provides dozens of reproducible project management tools for following the proven Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve- Control (DMAIC) process improvement format. Readers who follow its guidelines will be able to quickly and effectively: Determine a Six Sigma project's ROI Correct problems in current processes Develop and implement entirely new processes
Cyberactivism
This collection examines the growing importance of online activism. The contributors show how online activists have not only incorporated recent technology as a tool for change, but also how they have changed the meaning of activism, what community means, and how they conceive of collective identity and democratic change.
The Rhetoric of Risk
This volume examines rhetorical practices relating to situations of risk, and how documents and communication succeed or fail in these contexts. For scholars in technical communication, rhetoric, and related areas.
A History of the Logarithmic Slide Rule and Allied Instruments
The slide rule, with its many variations, has been vital to mathematics and engineering since its invention in the 17th century. Interest in this field has grown dramatically and collectors can still find much material at affordable prices. Unfortunately there has been little information available except for manufacturers manuals and catalogs, making this reprint of Cajori's classic particularly valuable. Also included with this reprint of the 1910 edition is Cajori's extensive article On the History of Gunter's Scale and the Slide Rule during the 17th Century, published by the University of California in 1920, which sets forth his subsequent findings. There is also a helpful explanatory introduction by Dr. Robert K. Otnes, editor of the Journal of the Oughtred Society
Handbook of Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning
The building industry accounts for about 25percent of the US gross national product through the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of commercial, institutional, and residential buildings. The Handbook of Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning provides a current, comprehensive review of the latest procedures and trends in the industry. It combines practice and theory, systems and control, and modern methods and technologies to provide, in one volume, all of the design and operation information needed by HVAC engineers. Through a link on the CRC Web site, owners of the handbook can access new material periodically posted by the author.
Sundials
To many people, the construction of a sundial implies laborious mathematical calculations and a knowledge of astronomy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This fascinating handbook, used in conjunction with ordinary tools and materials found around the home, makes it easy to design and construct a sundial on almost any surface and in virtually any position. Introductory chapters offer a wealth of information on the sundial's development from ancient times to the present, why the sundial tells time, how to design and make a dial, and more. These chapters are followed by full instructions on how to construct the hour lines for many kinds of sundials, by the graphic or geometric method. The use of this method doesn't require a knowledge of mathematics or astronomy. It simplicity and accuracy, together with the ease and quickness of delineation, make it very practical. Readers will also find fascinating chapters on dial furniture, portable sundials, constructing a heliochronometer (a highly precise solar timekeeper), sundial classification, and other topics. Accompanying the text are 150 well-chosen illustrations, many published for the first time. They depict scale models, as well as a moon dial, a cathedral dial, and other actual dials from around the world, including the world's largest, in Jaipur, India. If you've ever wanted to build your own sundial, or if you simply want to know more about these ancient timepieces that can show the time of day as accurately as many clocks, this clearly written, easy-to-follow guide is "the best book available." -- Commonweal.
Rescuing Prometheus
"A rare insight into industrial planning on a huge scale...Excellent." --The Economist Rescuing Prometheus is an eye-opening and marvelously informative look at some of the technological projects that helped shape the modern world. Thomas P. Hughes focuses on four postwar projects whose vastness and complexity inspired new technology, new organizations, and new management styles. The first use of computers to run systems was developed for the SAGE air defense project. The Atlas missile project was so complicated it required the development of systems engineering in order to complete it. The Boston Central Artery/Tunnel Project tested systems engineering in the complex crucible of a large scale civilian roadway. And finally, the origins of the Internet fostered the collegial management style that later would take over Silicon Valley and define the modern computer industry. With keen insight, Hughes tells these fascinating stories while providing a riveting history of modern technology and the management systems that made it possible.
Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
In the tumultuous late 60s and early 70s, a social movement known as the "New Left" emerged as a major cultural influence, especially on the youth of America. It was a movement that embraced "flower-power" and psychedelic "consciousness-expansion," that lionized Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro and launched the Black Panthers and the Theater of the Absurd.In Return Of The Primitive (originally published in 1971 as The New Left), Ayn Rand, bestselling novelist and originator of the theory of Objectivism, identified the intellectual roots of this movement. She urged people to repudiate its mindless nihilism and to uphold, instead, a philosophy of reason, individualism, capitalism, and technological progress.Editor Peter Schwartz, in this new, expanded version of The New Left, has reorganized Rand's essays and added some of his own in order to underscore the continuing relevance of her analysis of that period. He examines such current ideologies as feminism, environmentalism and multiculturalism and argues that the same primitive, tribalist, "anti-industrial" mentality which animated the New Left a generation ago is shaping society today.
The Existential Pleasures of Engineering
Humans have always sought to change their environment--building houses, monuments, temples, and roads. In the process, they have remade the fabric of the world into newly functional objects that are also works of art to be admired. In this second edition of his popular Existential Pleasures of Engineering, Samuel Florman explores how engineers think and feel about their profession. A deeply insightful and refreshingly unique text, this book corrects the myth that engineering is cold and passionless. Indeed, Florman celebrates engineering not only crucial and fundamental but also vital and alive; he views it as a response to some of our deepest impulses, an endeavor rich in spiritual and sensual rewards. Opposing the "anti-technology" stance, Florman gives readers a practical, creative, and even amusing philosophy of engineering that boasts of pride in his craft.
Introductory Surveying
With 375 problems fully solved step by step, and clear, well-illustrated coverage of the practices and applications of surveying, this powerful study guide can help you master your course with less study time. Perfect for independent study, it gives you full coverage of the entire subject, from trigonometry for surveyors through drawing maps. With Schaum's, you know you're getting a quality product, and this study guide for beginning courses in surveying is the best there is.
Science Technology and American Foreign Policy
In an age when science and technology are becoming the popular yardsticks for measuring progress or prestige in international affairs, it is strange indeed that little literature relevant to the role of science in relation to foreign policy exists. That void is filled, and admirably so, by this book--a timely articulation of a relationship hitherto superficially accepted but usually denied in practice, because it is only vaguely understood.Skolnikoff shows the breadth of the relationship and the character of the interaction between the scientific and other elements of major issues of foreign affairs. Most important, he shows how the uncertainties inherent in judgments about science and technology are affected by political factors, and reciprocally, how political factors depend on scientific and technological factors figure prominently, real integration of science and technology in the policy process is essential. In this respect, the existing mechanisms of the U.S. Government, particularly in the Department of State, are demonstrated to be wanting.To make these and other points, such as the use of science and technology as new tools of policy, the book discusses in turn the major areas of policy--arms and arms control, space, atomic energy, bilateral relations, international organizations and the like--using a combined analytical and case study approach. The discussion develops the nature of the technical elements of policy issues and points out the requirements posed for the policy process. Modifications of existing methods for providing scientific inputs in foreign affairs are offered. In addition, the book offers for the first time a history of the science advisory mechanisms for foreign policy in the White House and Department of State. A final chapter demonstrates the meaning of continuing technological advances for some of the basic assumptions: for example, the changed significance of national freedom of action, the inviolability of national borders, the possibility of having to suppress or control technology, and the inevitable growth of decision making on an international scale.Science, Technology, and American Foreign Policy is certain to hold the attention of scholar and policy maker alike, for it is the first book to treat this subject from a policy vantage point. This assures the best kind of generality, for it allows an over-all view of not one but the spectrum of scientific issues that are constantly meeting and interacting with the political demands posed by an effective international policy.
The Technological Society
As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in 1954, Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology--which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind--threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful reading of this book. "A magnificent book . . . He goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized, rendered efficient, and diminished in the process."--Harper's "One of the most important books of the second half of the twentieth-century. In it, Jacques Ellul convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything that prevents the internal logic of its development, including humanity itself--unless we take necessary steps to move human society out of the environment that 'technique' is creating to meet its own needs."--The Nation "A description of the way in which technology has become completely autonomous and is in the process of taking over the traditional values of every society without exception, subverting and suppressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture in which all non-technological difference and variety are mere appearance."--Los Angeles Free Press
