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Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation (review)

641 concepts underpinning a cultural-studies approach to technology. The text emerged from the authors’ classroom experiences and needs, and many readers will identify with the challenges of promoting critical thinking about technology among our students. The first two sections of the book summarize “the received view” of technology (chapters on progress, convenience, determinism, and control) and noteworthy challenges to it (considerations of Luddism, appropriate technology, and the Unabomber). The text’s second half introduces readers to a mixture of concepts (such as causality, agency, and identity) and processes (notably globalization). For this reader, the book raised the question of whether we can go too far in meeting our students “where they are.” The authors’ commitment to accessibility results in a text that is excessively conversational or indeed sometimes reminiscent of student writing (“So the good news is you don’t have to decide between technological determinism and cultural determinism” [p. 49]; “As the eighteenth century turned into the nineteenth, the Industrial Revolution was heating up” [p. 14]). Perhaps it is unfair to criticize this tone given the book’s origins and intentions. What works well in a classroom discussion or presentation, however, doesn’t necessarily translate well to the printed page. Nevertheless, some instructors may find inspiration for their own classroom practice in some of the analogies and anecdotes found here. Others may be frustrated that comedian Eddie Izzard rates more index entries than most scholars mentioned. Overall, the book provides a serviceable introduction to its chosen themes. But the treatment of any individual topic seems too cursory to be very useful. Summaries of major scholarly works, such as Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s More Work for Mother (1983) invite their use, though one then might reasonably just teach an excerpt and dispense with the distillation. While this primer may suit the needs of some introductory courses, I would maintain that such a text serves as a crutch, and many of us will opt to be more demanding of our students and ourselves.