Books about technological change and society

May 1, 2016 10:19 AM

I'm looking for great books about the history of how innovation and/or technological change affected society. I want to know about both the direct effects a new technology had and the indirect effects on employment, regulation etc... Interested in books that look at how a single technology changed society and more sweeping overviews. Interested in any time period.
posted by roolya_boolya to Society & Culture (16 answers total)

Maybe your question was already inspired by a recent podcast episode of Freakonomics, but they mention this book which sounds right up your ally :)
posted by Drosera at 10:25 AM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Dense but brilliant.
posted by uncannyslacks at 10:27 AM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

A classic in the field
posted by kindall at 10:32 AM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think you'll love Steven Johnson's books, especially How We Got To Now, which covers 6 technologies in a way you'll like. I also re-read The Ghost Map about once a year because it's so well-written and thought-provoking - it's ostensibly a history of a famous London cholera outbreak, but really it's a book about thinking and ideas and connections.

Not exactly about a technology, but Salt is a great deep-dive read that might scratch the same itch.
posted by Coffeemate at 10:54 AM on May 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: The Box, about shipping containers, is a great example.
posted by migurski at 10:56 AM on May 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

I've always been a fan of James Burke's The Day The Universe Changed, both the series and the book. I that's your thing you might also look at another of his series called Connections.
posted by sapere aude at 11:35 AM on May 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

Best answer: The Whale and The Reactor is one of my favorites.
posted by pantarei70 at 12:12 PM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Fernand Braudel covered a huge amount of ground along the lines you're looking for:

The work is a broad-scale history of the preindustrial modern world, presented in the minute detail demanded by the school called cliometrics, focusing on how people made economies work. Like all his major works, it mixed traditional economic material with a thick description of the social impact of economic events on various facets of everyday life such as food, fashion, and other social customs.

Some of the work is dated - you probably don't want to take anything he says about China as the final word, especially - but he has amazing coverage of social and technological change in Europe during the Middle Ages. I've only made it through parts of Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. I: The Structure of Everyday Life so far, but once I get the time...

The technological advance whose societal impacts has been examined the most, of course, is James Watt's refinement of the steam engine. Eric Hobsbawm did a great job of covering the societal impact of it and all the other Industrial Revolution advances in The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848, Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day, and The Age of Capital: 1848-1875.

These are both definitely "sweeping overview" suggestions, by a couple of the world's great historians.
posted by clawsoon at 12:50 PM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you like Coffeemate's suggest of Salt, you might also enjoy the books Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World and A History of the World in 6 Glasses. Salt is the most interesting of the three, though, in my opinion.
posted by clawsoon at 1:08 PM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: John Keegan's A History of Warfare is a great book about the interaction between military technology, military society, and, to a lesser degree, the larger societies they're embedded in. It's another "sweeping" book, covering everything from ancient fortresses and the first domesticated horses to canned food and nukes. I recommend it highly.

Chariot: The Astounding Rise and Fall of the World's First War Machine is a mess of a book, but it has some interesting stuff in it. It could've been a great book with a better author or editor. I hesitate to recommend it.

The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800 is on my list after reading dozens of references to it in the fascinating Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. You could probably read the two of them together as a "how the technology of printing created the nation state" pair.
posted by clawsoon at 1:21 PM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

About Keegan's History of Warfare, I'll add: He's at his best in tying technology to changes in society when he talks about the age of conscription between 1870 and 1914. The technologies that made mass infantry armies effective - mass-produced rifles, canned foods, railroads, etc. - were on display in Prussia's swift victories over Austria and France, and the result was that all the rulers of Europe said, "Oh, shit, we need effective mass infantry armies, too, not these masses of undernourished, scraggly factory workers and peasants!" I'd be willing to read a whole book about that, about the beginnings of state socialism that sprang up all over Europe as old dynasties used the new wealth of the Industrial Revolution to transform new nations into healthy, educated, regimented, industrialized armed camps, but I haven't found the book yet.
posted by clawsoon at 1:56 PM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sir Henry Bessemer's autobiography is good. The Bessemer process made cheap steel possible.
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:05 PM on May 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

You definitely want Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 6:14 PM on May 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

I can't recommend this enough; at the time (1984) a groundbreaking work. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 by David Hounshell.
posted by CincyBlues at 6:56 PM on May 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Simon Winchester: The Map That Changed the World
posted by archimago at 9:21 AM on May 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Georgia Tech actually has a degree program in this: BS in History, Technology, and Society. You may find more reading and references by looking at their faculty in the program.
posted by oblique red at 1:33 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]