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The Shock of the Old by David Edgerton (view source)
Revision as of 13:44, 10 May 2018
, 13:44, 10 May 2018no edit summary
So I'm not going to make 17 points. I'm just going to say that David Edgerton's book talks about technology. It doesn't talk about the kind of technology that put the first man on the moon, or allowed rich people to fly across the Atlantic faster than the speed of sound. It talks about the kind of technology that is most used. It talks about the hundreds of millions of people whose houses are made of corrugated iron. It talks about the sewing machine, the rickshaw and the sorts of technology in use across the world by millions of people every day. It replaces the timeline of invention with the timeline of use. And it's not just the poor countries that use "old" technology more than cutting edge developments. It's you and me too. The horse was more significant to the German war effort between 1939 and 1945 than was the motor vehicle. Ships allow the rich world to benefit from cheap goods produced in the poor world. A third of the bombs dropped in 1991 in Iraq were dropped by B52s. And the list goes on.
What is so shocking about reading The Shock of the Old (a pun, I'm assuming on [[''The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change]] '' by Robert Hughes about innovation in art) is that Edgerton seems to be the only person saying these things. We seem to live in a world of "innovation propaganda" where TV programmes such as Star Trek show us an inevitable and benign future towards which a deterministic timeline of invention will inexorably lead humankind. If you actually think about this, it's a laughable idea and evidence to the contrary surrounds us. We can't take a step or a glance about without seeing it. We still fight wars. The poor are still with us. Imperialism is alive and well. It's madness. Thank heavens then, for Edgerton, who may well be doing little more than stating the blindingly obvious, but at least he is stating it. And persuasively too.
Great book, easy to read, unflinchingly critical. Do buy it!