{"product_id":"retooling-a-historian-confronts-technological-change-9780262731638","title":"Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change","description":"\u003cb\u003eA humanistic account of the changing role of technology in society, by a historian and a former Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education at MIT.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen Warren Kendall Lewis left Spring Garden Farm in Delaware in 1901 to enter MIT, he had no idea that he was becoming part of a profession that would bring untold good to his country but would also contribute to the death of his family's farm. In this book written a century later, Professor Lewis's granddaughter, a cultural historian who has served in the administration of MIT, uses her grandfather's and her own experience to make sense of the rapidly changing role of technology in contemporary life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRosalind Williams served as Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education at MIT from 1995 through 2000. From this vantage point, she watched a wave of changes, some planned and some unexpected, transform many aspects of social and working life--from how students are taught to how research and accounting are done--at this major site of technological innovation. In Retooling, she uses this local knowledge to draw more general insights into contemporary society's obsession with technology.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eToday technology-driven change defines human desires, anxieties, memories, imagination, and experiences of time and space in unprecedented ways. But technology, and specifically information technology, does not simply influence culture and society; it is itself inherently cultural and social. If there is to be any reconciliation between technological change and community, Williams argues, it will come from connecting technological and social innovation--a connection demonstrated in the history that unfolds in this absorbing book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRosalind Williams is Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51720780448018,"sku":"9780262731638","price":32.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_1930e2cd-2491-4189-a35c-4d1c9f4699bb.jpg?v=1762935915","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/retooling-a-historian-confronts-technological-change-9780262731638","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}