Technological change is often seen as something that follows its own logic – something about which we may protest, but which we are unable to alter fundamentally. This reader challenges that assumption. In it, a collection of distinguished authors demonstrate that technology is affected at a fundamental level by the social context in which it develops. The first section introduces the reader to general arguments about the relation of technology to society. In subsequent sections the editors examine three types of technology in particular: the technology of production, domestic technology and military (especially nuclear) technology. In each case a variety of examples is used to demonstrate how technologies reflect such features of the social and economic environment as the social relations of the workplace, gender divisions in society, or the dictates of the state. The editors argue that social scientists have devoted disproportionate attention to the effects of technology on society, and have tended to ignore the more fundamental question of what shapes technology in the first place. Drawing both on established work in the history of technology and on newer feminist and Marxist perspectives they show how important and fruitful it is to try to answer the deeper question.

The author draws comparisons and parallels between culture today and past historical events of the 20th century.

Review "It's part public utility, part invisible marvel, and part social force. As an indispensable, intrusive artifact of modern life, the telephone is always answered but rarely questioned, its functions largely unexplored. However, with the publication of this festschrift-for-a-technology, that neglect has ended. Based on twenty-one papers presented at MIT on the hundredth birthday of the telephone, The Social Impact of the Telephone draws together the research and insights of social scientists, historians, engineers, and journalists into a fascinating and rewarding volume." —Journal of Communication"The subject matter in Pool's volume ranges broadly. It includes the telephone in history, literature, urban development, and its relation to women, geography, use of time and language...an intriguing topic." —The Wilson Quarterly"The twenty-one contributors are a varied and formidable lot, ranging from Bell System personnel (John R. Pierce, Henry M. Boettinger) to sociologists (Sidney H. Aronson, Suzanne Keller, Emanual A. Schegloff), historians (Asa Briggs, Charles R. Perry), geographers (Jean Gottmann, Ronald Abler), economists (Bertil Thorngren), psychologists (David Lester), political scientists (Ithiel de Sola Pool), media specialists (Yves Stourdze, Colin Cherry, Alan Wurtzel, Colin Turner, J. Alan Moyer, Alex Reid, Paladugu Rao), and writers (Martin Meyer, Brenda Maddox, John Brooks). What emerges...is the first collective scholarly attempt to assess the social impact of telephony." —Business History Review Product description Book by

This book was first published in 1980. Walter Ullmann made substantial contributions to many areas of medieval studies, and to those of papal history and cannon law particularly, which have been distinguished by quality and quantity alike. The bibliography of his published work included in this volume contains almost four hundred items. No less influential for generations of students have been his teaching and lecturing, especially at Leeds and from 1949 to 1978 at Cambridge. In Authority and Power friends and former pupils combined to mark his retirement from the Cambridge Chair of Medieval History, with each contributor writing on or near the subject originally studied under Professor Ullmann's supervision. The essays serve both to acknowledge a sense of shared indebtedness to Professor Ullmann and to indicate new approaches and developments, as they were at the time, in legal-historical scholarship. --