Edgerton reassesses the significance of such acclaimed inventions as the Pill and information technology, and underscores the continued importance of unheralded technology, debunking many notions about the implications of the 'information age.' A provocative history, The Shock of the Old provides an entirely new way of looking historically at the relationship between invention and innovation. Indeed, many highly touted technologies, from the V-2 rocket to the Concorde jet, have been costly failures, while many mundane discoveries, like corrugated iron, become hugely important around the world. He challenges us to view the history of technology in terms of what everyday people have actually used-and continue to use-rather than just sophisticated inventions.

Now, in The Shock of the Old, David 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. Wells to the press releases of NASA, we are awash in clichéd claims about high technology's ability to change the course of history.

Pre-order my new book, How To Make The World Add Up, out 17 September in the UK.From the books of H.G. But there are more subtle instances, such as the emergence of a low-tech shipbreaking industry in Gujurat.) But Edgerton goes further: sometimes the future arrives in a particular place and time, and stubbornly fails to be distributed sometimes, indeed, the future disappears, leaving the past to overtake us. The Shock of the Old spans 212 pages and I. William Gibson told us that the future was already here – just not very evenly distributed. But hereabouts, each dog ear represents something vital, something I feel I must tell you about when I review it. The contraceptive pill was revolutionary, yes – but condoms existed before and they still exist now, partly because they do things that the pill does not.

Tanks and trenches robbed horses of their glorious role in the cavalry charge – and yet the Wehrmacht used well over a million horses in the second world war, where they were essential for transporation. Edgerton argues that we should look things rather than ideas – technology as it is actually used rather than life on the technological frontier. It’s terrific stuff: packed with memorable facts yet easy to read, counter-intuitive yet persuasive.īooks about technology tend to focus on the inventions, the cutting edge – a timeline of ‘firsts’. I re-read this fascinating book today to help me with a column.

Edgerton the shock of the old