The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 by David Edgerton

From the Publisher

From the books of H.G. Wells to the press releases of NASA, we are awash in cliched claims about technology and history, writes David Edgerton. Now, in The Shock of the Old, Edgerton offers a startling new and fresh way of thinking about the history of technology, radically revising our ideas about the interaction of technology and society in the past and in the present. Our sense of technological time--and our thinking about technology and production, nationalism, war, and more besides--will all be changed, and to a surprising degree.
Modern technology, writes Edgerton, is not just a matter of electricity, mass production, aerospace, nuclear power, and the internet. It also involves the rickshaw, the horse, corrugated iron, cement, DDT, small arms, flat-pack furniture and the refrigerator. The Shock of the Old challenges us to view the history of technology in terms of what everyday people have actually used--and continue to use around the world--rather than just what was invented. The reader discovers that many highly touted technologies--from the V-2 rocket to the Concorde jet--have been costly failures. On the other hand, corrugated iron emerges as hugely important, a truly global technology. Its cheapness, lightness, ease of use and long life made it a ubiquitous material in the poor world in a way it never had been in the rich world. Edgerton reassesses the significance of such acclaimed inventions as the Pill and IT, and underscores the continued importance of unheralded technology, debunking the idea that we live in an era of ever-increasing invention and casting doubt upon the many naive assertions about "the information age."
A provocative history in the mold ofSimon Schama, David S. Landes, and Eric Hobsbawm, The Shock of the Old provides an entirely new way of looking historically at the relationship between technology and society as well as invention and innovation themselves.

Publishers Weekly

A class titled History of Modern Technology 101 would probably focus on electricity, mass production, the automobile and the Internet, but according to British historian Edgerton, it would miss the real history of 20th-century technology. We should pay less attention to novelty and invention, he argues, and more to the technologies that people actually use in their daily lives-"a whole invisible world of technologies," many of which have served the poor more than the rich, such as corrugated metal and flat-pack IKEA furniture. Ranging across broad swaths of history, Edgerton offers multiple examples of overlooked technologies that are far more important than they might initially seem, including the condom and the sewing machine, as well as innovations in killing, such as insecticides, slaughterhouses and chemical warfare. The result, while sometimes overly pedantic for nonhistorians, is a provocative challenge to students of technology. (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Technology prophets, by their very nature, shine a spotlight on new things, speculating about their present and future significance to society. The avalanche of writings over the last ten years heralding the emergence of an "invention age" has prompted a backlash by technology historians like Edgerton. Using the 20th century as backdrop, he juxtaposes prestige technologies (e.g., the nuclear bomb, the pill, Zyklon B) with tried-and-true technologies in a given place and time to demonstrate the folly of innovationcentric history writing and thinking. The actual use of technology, not its emergence, tells a different innovation story with a whole new set of main characters: corrugated steel, bicycles, small firearms, machetes, condoms, and pesticides, to name a few. Deep, dark, and disturbing, this provoking journey will challenge your beliefs about the influence of various technologies in the world today. Strongly recommended for all collections.-James A. Buczynski, Seneca Coll. of Applied Arts & Technology Libs., Toronto Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

"Edgerton arrestingly challenges the claim that hi-tech innovation is essential for progress and prosperity in the contemporary world. He tells us why a variety of old technologies--from spinning wheels to butter churns and rickshaws to mosquito netting--play essential roles in global life. And he reveals that the most sophisticated technologies are not always cost effective compared with their lower-tech counterparts. In all, a fascinating, thought-provoking book."
— Daniel J. Kevles, Stanley Woodward Professor of History, Yale University

"David Edgerton is on to something very important. The Shock of the Old is one book that I intend to savour slowly and use.
—David S. Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations and The Unbound Prometheus

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