Melvin Kranzberg Concepts

The Rise of the Network Society

by Manuel Castells · 31 Aug 1996 · 843pp · 223,858 words

, Roberto Laserna, Alejandro Foxley, John Urry, Guy Benveniste, Katherine Burlen, Vicente Navarro, Dieter Ernst, Padmanabha Gopinath, Franz Lehner, Julia Trilling, Robert Benson, David Lyon and Melvin Kranzberg. Throughout the past 12 years a number of institutions have constituted the basis for this work. First of all is my intellectual home, the University

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. This dialectical interaction between society and technology is present in the works of the best historians, such as Fernand Braudel. 4 Classic historian of technology Melvin Kranzberg has forcefully argued against the false dilemma of technological determinism. See, for instance, Kranzberg’s (1992) acceptance speech of the award of honorary membership in

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industrial revolution, inducing a pattern of discontinuity in the material basis of economy, society, and culture. The historical record of technological revolutions, as compiled by Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll Pursell,10 shows that they are all characterized by their pervasiveness, that is by their penetration of all domains of human activity, not

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of the current process of technological change, but so it is of preceding technological revolutions, as is shown by leading historians of technology, such as Melvin Kranzberg and Joel Mokyr.12 The first industrial revolution, although not science-based, relied on the extensive use of information, applying and developing pre-existing knowledge

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social dimension of the information technology revolution seems bound to follow the law on the relationship between technology and society proposed some time ago by Melvin Kranzberg: “Kranzberg’s First Law reads as follows: Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.”104 It is indeed a force, probably more

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, and the species itself, are matters of inquiry rather than of fate. I shall now proceed with such an inquiry. 1 Gould (1980: 226). 2 Melvin Kranzberg, one of the leading historians of technology, wrote “The information age has indeed revolutionized the technical elements of industrial society” (1985: 42). As for its

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(1999) Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Sharlin, Harold I. (1967) “Electrical generation and transmission”, in Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell Jr (eds), Technology in Western Civilization, 2 vols, New York: Oxford University Press, vol. 2, pp. 578–91. Shin, E.H

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

by Azeem Azhar · 6 Sep 2021 · 447pp · 111,991 words

market based on day labour. In other words, it is our choices and our circumstances that determine how technology is actually used. As the historian Melvin Kranzberg put it: ‘The point is that the same technology can answer questions differently, depending on the context into which it is introduced and the problem

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by William Jevons in his essay ‘The Coal Question’. 11 Sheila Jasanoff, The Ethics of Invention (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2016). 12 Melvin Kranzberg, ‘Technology and History: “Kranzberg’s Laws”’, Technology and Culture, 27(3), 1986, pp. 544–560 <https://doi.org/10.2307/3105385>. 13 Jasanoff, The Ethics

Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat

by Bee Wilson · 14 Sep 2012 · 376pp · 110,321 words

than they solve, and others that work perfectly well, but at a human cost. Historians of technology often quote Kranzberg’s First Law (formulated by Melvin Kranzberg in a seminal essay in 1986): “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” This is certainly true in the kitchen. Tools are

Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest

by Zeynep Tufekci · 14 May 2017 · 444pp · 130,646 words

for their choices, but history shows that technology is not just a neutral tool that equally empowers every potential use, outcome, or person. The historian Melvin Kranzberg perhaps stated this best with his first law of technology: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral” (my italics).16 Technology alters

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worked out. Another lesson is that what appears to empower one group can also empower its adversaries, and introduce novel twists to many dynamics. Historian Melvin Kranzberg’s famous dictum holds true: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”8 Neither are technology’s effects static; everything evolves as

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), for modeling and inference. 15. George Orwell, “George Orwell: You and the Atomic Bomb,” 1945, http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb. 16. Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws,’” Technology and Culture 27, no. 3 (1986): 544–60. (Quote is on page 545.) 17. Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo J

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://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2016/12/09/mens-attitudes-about-women-were-changing-in-this-indian-village-then-a-dowry-dispute-turned-deadly/. 8. Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws,’” Technology and Culture 27, no. 3 (1986): 544–60, doi:10.2307/3105385. 9. Anthony Olcott, Open Source Intelligence

The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention

by William Rosen · 31 May 2010 · 420pp · 124,202 words

capita of $2,130 in 1700 and $1,838 in 1820, expressed in 1990 U.S. dollars. 30 In 1789, the year of the Revolution Melvin Kranzberg, “Prerequisites for Industrialization,” in Kranzberg and Pursell, eds., Technology in Western Civilization. 31 By the same year, however Crafts, “Macroinventions, Economic Growth, and ‘Industrial Revolution

The Twittering Machine

by Richard Seymour · 20 Aug 2019 · 297pp · 83,651 words

Twittering Machine is a horror story, even though it is about technology that is in itself neither good nor bad. All technology, as the historian Melvin Kranzberg put it, is ‘neither good nor bad; nor neutral’.1 We tend to ascribe magical powers to technologies: the smartphone is our golden ticket, the

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on a lily pad, with nothing to do? Would someone call the police? REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES FOREWORD 1. All technology, as the historian Melvin Kranzberg put it . . . Melvin Kranzberg, ‘Technology and History: “Kranzberg’s Laws” ’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Jul., 1986), pp. 544–560. CHAPTER ONE 1. The Museum of

Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology

by Kentaro Toyama · 25 May 2015 · 494pp · 116,739 words

rhetoric, but most reasonable people can see that the truth is neither Star Trek nor Brave New World. It’s probably a mixture of both. Melvin Kranzberg, a historian of technology, embraced technology’s apparent contradictions. “Technology,” he wrote in 1986, “is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”22 This

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You

by Eli Pariser · 11 May 2011 · 274pp · 75,846 words

more benevolent than a wrench or a screwdriver. It’s only good when people make it do good things and use it in good ways. Melvin Kranzberg, a professor who studies the history of technology, put it best nearly thirty years ago, and his statement is now known as Kranzberg’s first

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-other-rights-are. 185 talked to Scott Heiferman: Interview with author, New York, NY, Oct. 5, 2010. 188 “good or bad, nor is it neutral”: Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws,’ ” Technology and Culture 27, no. 3 (1986): 544–60. Chapter Seven: What You Want, Whether You Want It or

How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (Information Policy)

by Benjamin Peters · 2 Jun 2016 · 518pp · 107,836 words

first to foresee. None of the conditions—technological, sociological, economic, or otherwise—for the flourishing of computer networks are necessarily as we may think. As Melvin Kranzberg’s first law of technology holds, technology is neither positive, negative, nor neutral.12 The same holds for society and economy. By looking at failed

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Books, 1999), 3–8. 11. Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 12. Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws,’” Technology and Culture 27 (3) (1986): 544–560. 13. For Latour’s aphorism, see Bruno Latour, “Technology Is Society

We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves

by John Cheney-Lippold · 1 May 2017 · 420pp · 100,811 words

and with many more participants involved than most of us could imagine. To make the world according to algorithm is, to paraphrase one of historian Melvin Kranzberg’s laws of technology, neither good nor bad nor neutral.93 But it is new and thus nascent and unperfected. It’s a world of

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: MIT Press, 2009). 92. Kevin Kelly and Derrick de Kerckhove, “4.10: What Would McLuhan Say?,” Wired, October 1, 1996, http://archive.wired.com. 93. Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws,’” Technology and Culture 27, no. 3 (1986): 544–560. 94. David Lyon, Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life (Berkshire, UK