Technology: Its Nature and Significance

This book offers a unique approach to studying the history of technology that focuses not only on how technology has shaped and continues to impact the world but also on deepening philosophical understanding of what technology is. Using carefully chosen and instructive cases, Jones traces the origins of technology through its development by humans, demonstrating how key steps in crafting and using tools and the advent of agriculture, written counting systems, and language shaped the course of human history. Jones also explores important relationships between technology and other central spheres of the modern human world: science, economics, society and politics, and the environment. Examples range from before recorded history to the digital age, and numerous illustrations and photographs throughout the text bring these cases to life for readers.