The Shock of the Old is a pathbreak-ing work—full of promise, but also somewhat disturbing. The subtitle, "Technology and Global History Since 1900," captures the volume's broad and arresting perspective, suggesting its concern with "asking questions about the place of technology within wider historical processes." The word shock in the provocative title alludes, I suppose, to contradictory pressures between new and more traditionally measured sequences of time and change, which are prominent in the book's panorama of interacting themes. This book is a bold and necessarily preliminary reconnaissance, in brief, in the direction of a comprehensively contextualized view of technology.
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