History of Technology

En se centrant sur l'histoire de la Société des Arts, le présent article analyse les attitudes des Genevois de la période 1750-1850 face à l'innovation technique. Au-delà des pétitions de principe en faveur du perfectionnement des sciences et des arts, il révèle le conservatisme d'un groupe de savants majoritairement issus de l'élite patricienne locale. Il décrit le souci des artisans, notamment des maîtres horlogers, de défendre une éthique de la qualité face aux tentatives de mécaniser et de standardiser leur appareil de production. En toile de fond sont abordées la question des difficultés de la collaboration entre classes sociales et celle des limites des transferts de techniques. Pour terminer, l'article évoque la lente diversification sectorielle qui accompagne la marche de l'économie genevoise vers une production de type industriel.

Focusing on the history of the Arts Society (Société des Arts), this article analyzes the attitudes of the Geneva population in regard to technical innovation. It first records the scholars' discourse about the perfecting of sciences and arts and shows the craftsmen's will, especially among the master watchmakers , to defend an ethos of quality against the attempts to mechanize their production devices. The limits to collaboration between social classes, and the conservatism of a group of scholars from the patrician elite, are also recalled. The study finally shows the difficulties, and sometimes the uselessness, of technological transfers, as well as the slow diversification of manufactures driving Geneva's economy towards industrialization.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

A ground-breaking volume examining the transnational conditions of the European Enlightenment, Crafting Enlightenment argues that artisans of the long eighteenth-century on four different continents created and disseminated ideas that revolutionized how we understand modern-day craftsmanship, design, labor, and technology. Starting in Europe, this book journeys through France across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas and then on to Asia and Oceania. Highlighting diverse identities of artisans, the authors trace how these historical actors formed networks at local and global levels to assert their own forms of expertise and experience. These artisans – some anonymous, eminent, and outside the margins – translated European Enlightenment thinking into a number of disciplines and trades including architecture, botany, ceramics, construction, furniture, gardening, horology, interior design, manuscript illustration, and mining. In each thematic section of this illustrated volume, two leading scholars present contrasting case studies of artisans in different geographic contexts. These paired chapters are also followed by shorter commentary that reflects on pertinent themes from both chapters. Emphasizing how and why artisanal histories around the world impacted civic and private life, commerce, cultural engagement, and sense of place, this book introduces new richness and depth to the conversations around the ambivalent and fragmented nature of the Enlightenment

Authors: Lauren Cannady (University of Maryland), Dennis Carr (The Huntington Library), Frédéric Dassas (Musée du Louvre), Jennifer Ferng (The University of Sydney), Emine Fetvaci (Boston College), Neil Kamil (University of Texas at Austin), Dorothy Ko (Barnard College), Chandra Mukerji (University of California San Diego), Valérie Nègre (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne), Sugata Ray (University of California Berkeley).

With: Florina Capistrano-Baker (CUNY), Kaijun Chen (Brown University), Thomas Crow (NYU), Richard Taws (UCL), and Nancy Um (Binghamton University).

Winter tourism developed an enormous transformative power. The example of Austria's westernmost province of Vorarlberg is used in this article to highlight the changing role of ski lifts from three different perspectives: Firstly , an analysis of funding schemes for ski lifts reveals their economic vulnerability , which snowfall patterns augmented. Secondly, ski-lift entrepreneurs aimed to lower risks of insolvency by accelerating the uphill and downhill flows of people and by manipulating snow and topography. This, thirdly, was made possible by driving back private property rights in favor of the winter-tourism industry. Combining these three perspectives provides a deeper understanding of the transformation of landscapes in alpine regions between 1930 and 1970.

Data Dating is a collection of ten academic essays accompanied by works of media art that provide a comprehensive insight into the construction of love and its practices in the time of digitally mediated relationships. The essays come from recognized researchers in the field of media and cultural studies.

INTRODUCTION
Introduction: Dating (the) Data and Other Intimacies
Ania Malinowska and Valentina Peri

1. WIRED LIMERENCE (feat. Deep Love by Antoine Schmitt)
Technology, Commerce and the Intimacy Revolution
Lauren Rosewarne

2. LOVE INFO-STRUCTURES (feat. Glaciers by Zach Gage)
Romance in a Time of Dark Data
Lee McKinnon

3. MEDIATED MATCHMAKING (feat. A Truly Magical Moment by Adam Basanta)
Fast Love. Temporalities of Digitized Togetherness
Ania Malinowska

4. EMOTIONS WITH THE MACHINE (feat. Ashley Madison Angels at Work by !Mediengruppe Bitnik)
‘Emotoys’: Ethics, Emotions and Empathic Technologies
Andrew McStay and Gilad Rosner

5. SELF-FASHIONING DESIRE (feat. Kill Your Darlings by Jeroen van Loon)
The Greatest Love of All: Recognition, Self-Love and the Imaging of Desire
Derek Conrad Murray

6. DIGITAL ONSCENITIES (feat. Peeping Tom (Porn Version) by Thomas Israel)
The New Onscenity. Navigating Digital Desires in the Twenty First Century Pornoscape
Lynn Comella

7. LIBIDINAL TECHNO-SCAPES (Webcam Venus by Addie Wagenknecht and Pablo Garcia)
The Proxemics of Digital Intimacy
Kyle Machulis

8. TOUCHLESS EMBRACES (feat. VR Hug by Tom Galle and Moises Sanabria)
Virtual Hugs and the Crises of Touch
David Parisi

9. SOUNDS OF FEELING (feat. Digital Synaesthetic E.E.G. Kiss by Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat)
I Can Hear Your Feelings
Andrew Blanton

10. INTERFACES OF EMOTIONAL SURVEILLANCE (feat. Face Messenger by Tom Galle and John Yuyi)
Timestamp Anxieties
Kristin Veel and Nanna Bonde Thylstrup

The Pacific War permanently transformed the political ecology of excrement in the Greater Tokyo area. Since the Edo period (1603–1868), a network of commercial night soil collectors had operated in the city, emptying its latrines for use as fertilizer. Although increasingly subject to strain in the interwar period, the system adapted enough to obviate significant municipal investment in sewer construction. Wartime mobilization and fuel shortages, however, pushed these night soil distribution networks to the breaking point, leading to an ''attack by excrement.'' The municipal government responded to the crisis by mobilizing residents' associations and suburban commuter trains, sidelining commercial collectors in the process. The immediate postwar period further destabilized the old political ecology: a black market in excrement briefly flourished, only to subside with the rapid proliferation of commercial fertilizer. Finally, Occupation government personnel, upon encountering the chaotic postwar night soil trade, expressed contempt for what they viewed as a backward, inherently unhygienic custom. The Tokyo metropolitan government internalized this

This paper revises current understandings of the connections between electrical and psychic forms of communication in the early twentieth century. It builds on and moves beyond scholarly studies that explore the metaphorical and analogical uses of electrical communication in understanding telepathy, spiritualism and other psychic phenomena. I argue that in British and American cultures of wireless telegraphy, electrical experimentation, psychical research and spiritualism, there were sincere attempts to extend electrical-psychic analogies into technological thinking and realisation. Inspired by debates about telepathy, brain waves and other psychic effects, members of these cultures imagined and constructed electrical communication technologies that would address a range of psychic puzzles. Although the technological solutions to psychic puzzles ultimately proved inconclusive, they provide historians with striking insights into the role of ‘irrational’ topics in shaping imagined and actual technological development.

A common ground is emerging for social and cultural studies of design. Design history is exploring the socially constructed and networked nature of our material surroundings; at the same time, STS is investigating design as the interface between humans and technology. This common ground is particularly interesting where it intersects with the rapidly growing fields of environmental history and environmental humanities. Today, environmental concerns, especially issues of sustainability, are essential parameters in all design practices. However, this ‘green revolution’ is a glaringly white spot on the design historical map, still awaiting its scholarly historicization. Historical understanding of, and critical reflection on, the rise of sustainability as the primordial trope in design discourse is essential to building a solid knowledge base and to underpin present and future decision-making. This article will argue for the urgency of charting this terrain, and call for design history, design studies, STS and environmental history to join forces in the pioneering efforts at studying histories of sustainable design.

Excavations were carried out in 1999 on the location of Stela 2 at the ancient site of Aksum in northern Ethiopia.
These excavations have permitted the documentation of the foundation of this stela, which was transported to Rome in 1937. Preparations were also made for the stela’s return to the site in 2005 and its re-erection in 2008 at the exact location where it stood in the 3rd or 4th century AD.
The excavations also made it possible to re-examine our perception of the three giant stelae on the site, from their conception and erection to their destruction.

Occasionally the archaeological ship reconstructor is fortunate enough to encounter the remains of a vessel on which shipwrights' design marks have been preserved. La Belle (1684) has the most extensive and complete set of such marks documented to date. The distinguishing features of the distribution, number, and placement of La Belle's surmarks associate it with a graphic design system of "geometric fairing with diagonals," which was in use in French shipbuilding in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Section I of this essay presents the archaeological and documentary evidence that supports the conclusion that a graphic design system of "geometric fairing with diagonals" was used in La Belle's construction. It also discusses how and which specific measurements were applied to the reconstructed design procedures to regenerate La Belle's archaeologically documented hull shape.

Section II examines whether La Belle's design system was a completely new invention or whether it was developed from existing concepts of ship design. It will be argued that this system actually expanded on the basic concepts of Mediterranean moulding—a non-graphic design system of geometric fairing that was in use in European shipbuilding for centuries prior to La Belle's construction—in the process of adapting them to the methods of orthographic drawing.

In molti contesti preistorici e protostorici italiani sono largamente rinvenuti resti strutturali in terra e conglomerati architettonici combusti o parzialmente cementati. La loro caratterizzazione tecnologica è un passo importante per ottenere dati rigurdanti la paleoeconomia,  lo sfruttamento delle risorse e l’esistenza di tradizioni costruttive su scala locale o regionale. L’integrazione al protocollo di analisi tecnologica di osservazioni effettuate ad occhio nudo o con microscopio ottico su sezioni levigate può aiutare ad una migliore comprensione dei resti in una fase intermedia dello studio, successiva alla loro caratterizzazione morfologica ed al riconoscimento di classi di impasto, ma preliminare all’approfondimento dello studio per mezzo di analisi specialistiche. La realizzazione su alcuni campioni di una sezione rettificata e polita (sezione levigata) permette infatti di descrivere con maggiore completezza l’organizzazione e la natura dei componenti, nonché le alterazioni subite dal materiale, ad esempio in caso di esposizione al calore. Si tratta dunque di associare le caratteristiche osservate ai meccanismi di deformazione della materia e a gesti specifici, che una volta messi in sequenza potranno permettere di ricostruire materie prime utilizzate, tecniche e catene operative. Qualche osservazione rilevante può riguardare anche le dinamiche di funzionamento delle strutture o il loro ingresso nel record archeologico. Sono qua presentati alcuni casi studio e chiavi di lettura preliminari, da completare ed affinare con l’avanzamento delle ricerche. Le prime applicazioni di tale tecnica hanno fornito risultati incoraggianti, soprattutto per il rapporto positivo tra massa di dati prodotta e costo finanziario ridotto.

Teaching the research paper has been considered a “present controversy” for over fifty years (Saalbach, 1963). Some scholars believe that it prepares students for “generalized academic writing” (Reiff and Bawarshi, 2011; Sutton, 1997; Schwegeler and Shamoon, 1982). However, others have referred to the research paper as a “fossilized,” “pseudo-academic,” “mutt genre” (Nowacek, 2011; Wardle, 2007; Carroll, 1999; Larsen, 1982). This chapter argues that radical openness and information overload--two major features of new media composing environments--compromise the relevance of the traditional research paper. First, the research paper has been praised and blamed for its (in)ability to help students learn the importance of writing from sources (Brent 2013, Rooney 2000). However, the parameters of most research assignments are incapable of matching the scale of data available at any given time. For instance, typical constraints like “use 5-7 sources” for a first-year college writing course seems ridiculous when it takes seconds to retrieve thousands, if not millions, of possible sources. Next, open-access publishing and collaborative authorship have transformed the way that research is conducted and recognized across disciplines. Although teaching students how to crowdsource research makes the most sense in a data deluge, the research paper privileges single authorship. Moreover, the problems of authorship and source attribution implicate the research paper in certain kinds of fraud. For instance, plagiarism and term paper mills are a “built-in” problem of research papers (Howell, 1977).  In sum, this chapter focuses on what the term "research" means in a context of too much information.  It concludes by offering a brief discussion of literature relevant to this topic.

PhotoResearcher No. 37 is the first publication in recent times to investigate the rich material-scientific-political uses of three-colour photography at the turn of the last century. It maps the shifting expressions of its technologies, tracing the various expeditions during which it was deployed, the neighbouring disciplines it serviced,
and problematizing its imperial entanglements. It does so on a larger scale than what is often afforded this medium, connecting countries through three-colour practices.

Machines as mechanisms making easy human life, in their most primitive forms, go back to the ancient ages. It is possible to say that they are older than theoretical knowledge, because one received support from these devices in his struggle with nature. These devices had been developed in hands of Roman engineers after Alexandrian times. We met new machines that have been never appeared previously in Medieval Islam. The book of Ingenious Machines by Al-Jazarî was a turning point in the history of machine. Other machine works also had been written after Al-Jazarî like that of Taqi al-Dîn. The subject of this text is the process of development of machines in Islamic and Ottoman civilizations. Key Words: History of machine, History of technology. Yunanca "mekhane" sözcüğünün Latinceye "machine" olarak geçmesinden türemiş makine sözcüğünün, esasında İbraniceden Yunancaya geçtiği tahmin edilmektedir. Eski Yunanlılar İbraniceye ve bu dille kaleme alınan yazıtlara aşina olduklarından, onlardan sıklıkla terim ve sözcük ödünç almışlardı. İbranice "Mekhona" sözcüğünü "mekhane" olarak aktarmış olmaları muhtemeldir.

Scholars of the twentieth century, with rare exception, were less than generous in their conception of objects (cf. Latour 2005, 72-73; Olsen 2010, 1-3). Whether out of anxiety or indifference, under the inexorable onslaught of automobiles, high-rise buildings, paved surfaces, motorized drills, refrigerators, portable radios, Rubik’s cubes, spray cleaners, and whatever else that happened to flood onto the scene, humans concerned with the human condition managed to insulate human being and thus sever a partial and limited image of society from nonhuman objects including animal and vegetal others, which were all maintained at a distance behind an insurmountable wall of incommensurability (Latour 1993). Of course, this firm separation had deeper roots. Through its various extensions the Cartesian project, which held objects to be passive and inert as opposed to the dynamic and creative human subject, proved to be tenacious (Olsen et al. 2012). And yet, with the century having run its course, whether or not scholars are willing to concede this legacy is now of less concern than how it is that coal-fired power plants, permafrost, abandoned uranium mines, smart phones, hurricanes, or pacemakers have refused to comply with their expectations.

Children and the media - kids and Technology combo
Today, technology for kids is a source of learning and entertainment, and in a pinch when parents have to get dinner made or take a few minutes to answer emails, a terrific babysitter.
For school-age kids, technology can be a double-edged sword. There are countless benefits that can be garnered from using technology: Computers can be used to do research, play online math games, and improve language skills. Television (and DVDs) can offer educational programming such as documentaries and other educational materials. And even video games can encourage developmental skills such as hand-eye coordination (and some motion-controlled active games on the Wii or Xbox with Kinect can promote physical activity such as dancing). But all these electronic devices can also have some distinct disadvantages as well. Here are some reasons why technology should be limited for kids and how to do it.
Reasons for Limiting Kids’ Exposure to Technology

Este ensayo presenta una discusión y análisis sobre el caso Cybersyn, desde una perspectiva de arqueología de medios, poniendo particular atención en los desarrollos teóricos y metodológicos planteados por los académicos Friedrich Kittler y Wolfgang Ernst. En consecuencia, la discusión se centrará en aspectos no-visuales del proyecto en cuestión, dejando de lado las miradas «iconográficas» que hasta ahora han abordado este caso, primeramente, desde las fotografías que documentan su sala de operaciones. De modo alternativo, propongo mover nuestra atención hacia la red de télex y el sistema de procesamiento que sostuvieron a Cybersyn, para buscar en ellos, en los sistemas de símbolos que por allí circularon, la materialización del saber técnico que caracterizaría al caso, esbozando así, potencialmente, su alcance cultural.

Gender and technology might seem unrelated on first sight because technology is often considered a neutral other that does not have anything to do with gender. Yet, taking a closer look at the language we use to talk about technology, at the images we rely on to represent technology, its uses and users, it becomes clear that gender stereotypes are more present than ever in the context of technology. Rather than subverting traditional gender roles, technology often reinforces and re-inscribes stereotypical behavior and ideas. Analyzing Apple iPad/iPhone advertisements, this paper will uncover some of the gender biases present in popular techno-narratives.

This article surveys American eye prosthetics during the World Wars beginning with the shortage of glass eyes during the First World War. It also looks at attempts to address prosthetic eye needs in the Second World War through the acrylic eye program, the use of contact lenses, and a group of Americans seeking to show their patriotism by donating their own eyeballs to blinded veterans.

Google “What is Clubhouse?” and you’ll find a flurry of articles written in the past few weeks about this fast-growing social network. It’s not yet a year old, and much of the buzz stems from the fact that Clubhouse is invite-only, bringing with it an element of exclusivity.

Clubhouse’s key attribute is its medium: audio, which sets it apart from established social media and messaging services like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp and YouTube that use text, photos, video or a mix. Clubhouse combines the structure of old-school text chatrooms with the immediacy and emotion of the human voice.

The social media service is tapping into the creativity, intimacy and authenticity that audio can deliver, a trend that lies at the heart of the current golden age of podcasting.

The article surveys the findings and debates about “technological unemployment” carried out in the 1920's and 1930's in the United States. The huge productivity increases of the 1920's had sizable labour‐displacing effects, which were not matched by the job‐creating trends of prosperity. Unemployment was therefore a sizable and observable phenomenon as early as the late 1920's, while manufacturing employment shrank. After 1929, it was found that the Depression had hit production and investment hard, but productivity per man‐hour continued to increase. This meant that, because of the increases in population of working age and because of technological progress, in the late 1930's it would have been necessary to outgrow the levels of investment and production of 1929 in order to bring unemployment down to the 1929 rate. Even the recovery of 1937 remained much below those levels: the cause was seen in the behavior of large, concentrated industrial firms that administered prices and only applied technological advances in order to reduce costs. Their limited spending did not foster enough demand to move the economy out of the slump. The recovery was eventually brought about not by spontaneous, market-driven economic behavior, but by the deus-ex-machina of war-induced Government spending.

This article examines a series of proposals for improving silver refining methods presented to the municipal council of Potosí (in current-day Bolivia) in the late sixteenth century as a means of nuancing current understandings of the Iberian state’s pursuit of “useful” knowledge. Historians have argued that the sixteenth century saw the fostering of an empirical culture, one based on experiential and collaborative practices, in the Iberian world. They have stressed that as artisanal experts and royal officials developed a mutually beneficial relationship, this empirical culture became institutionalized in administrative bodies for the pursuit of useful knowledge. This article focuses on the textual production that resulted from the relationship between artisanal experts and royal officials. It probes the motivations of local officials in generating a textual record of artisanal knowledge. Historians have tended to interpret and actors at the time often stated an interest in inscribing, artisanal knowledge as expertise and experience. However, this article demonstrates that what often motivated municipal officials’ inscription of such knowledge was an emphasis on administrative knowledge as rule-following, in particular, a desire to demonstrate one’s competency as an administrator. This conclusion suggests historians should expand their conception of “useful” to better reflect how early modern actors in the Iberian world viewed their pursuit of scientific and technical knowledge. It also indicates the importance of paying attention to the process of bureaucratic knowledge production when interpreting the written traces of the scientific and technical culture of the early modern Iberian world.

This is the summary of my dissertation (Medeltidens åerbruk), published in 1985, and the public defense of the dissertation was in January 1986. The goal was to give a detailed description of agriculture, see diagram 6, page 155. This then led to the interpretation about technical complex, which I later further developed. This interpretation is thus based on an inductive approach rather than a deductive – though I of course was steered by general ideas of an economic base and small scale technology as decisive. The cover is one of my favorite pictures, showing plowing in the fall after harvest when animals graze the meadows - it is  from 1437, Tensta, Uppland and shows Adam / Cain working.

Early on the morning of 5 August 1914, the powerful long-distance Marconi wireless station at Poldhu transmitted a wireless message on behalf on the Admiralty to all British merchant vessels.  The message was the first public announcement of the outbreak of war and warned British vessels to head to a friendly or neutral port.  The message was picked up by wireless- equipped ships and wireless stations including those operated by the Post Office and wireless amateurs.  On 11 November 1918, the Armistice was also announced via a wireless transmission from the Marconi station at Poldhu.

Much had changed over the four years of the war including wireless communications which now included practical systems of radio telephony in addition to the pre-war systems of wireless telegraphy.  Many of the wartime developments in wireless communications were the results of collaboration between the Marconi Company, her staff and engineers, and all branches of the British military.  Marconi long-distance stations were used to intercept enemy transmissions and broadcast propaganda on behalf of the Admiralty with the former being sent to “Room 40” in Whitehall, London for decryption and analysis.  Former Marconi engineers enlisted in the army and navy and developed systems of wireless interception and direction-finding – World War One was truly the birthplace of signals intelligence (“SIGINT”).  Marconi Company also trained wireless operators for the military and worked with and sometimes for the Royal Flying Corps, later Royal Air Force, to develop systems of radio telephony for use in aircraft for artillery spotting and inter-plane communication.

The importance of wireless communications as well as the vital contribution of the Marconi Company to the war effort was acknowledged in part through a six-figure payment by the British government to the Marconi Company in the mid-1920s in recognition of their wartime efforts.  This paper will explore the important work of the Marconi Company throughout the war including local connections such as a signals interception station located at the Marconi works here in Chelmsford.

The subject of study of my MSc thesis was a revival of vinyl replay (LP records) within the dynamics of music replay in 2007, including declining CD sales, the disappearance of compact cassettes, RIAA actions against file-sharers and the increasing popularity of legal downloading, to understand how such events could co-occur.

In this thesis I have described and analyzed a historical overview of major developments that have shaped audio (and video) replay. I compared the values these developments hold for the parties involved between mainstream audio (and video) replay and vinyl replay. To this end I developed a methodology called the Value System. The result is an organized insight into a complex situation of agency and structure, over time, across formats.

It’s main conclusion then was that, when a necessity has moved to the digital domain and becomes a commodity there, this will provide room for the previous analogue process to be enjoyed in limited form as a classical experience, or, premium experience.