Description
This essay discusses the history of control, looking at how it has been used in different ways to solve various problems. It also examines the contradictory moral, political and economic consequences of control technologies.
This collection of essays explores the history of control by looking at a variety of cultural forms, practices and beliefs. These ideas are examined critically, not only in the light of the possibilities which control technologies seem to offer for resolving human problems, but also the contradictory moral, political and economic consequences they have had. The discussion takes into account the important modes in which humans have cast their organizational efforts - political, social, psychological, economic and legal. It also takes a longue duree view of the history of control, looking back to the 18th and 19th centuries, and establishes the continuities in the 20th century as a transatlantic phenomenon. Review: Cultures of Control serves as an index of the advance of science and technology studies. These fine, informative and often path-breaking essays explore how technology and culture mutually interact and form each other. The older conundrums of technological determinism and idealism are considerably surpassed in a set of essays that is remarkably coherent given the disciplinary diversity of the authors, and yet fruitfully integrates these two terms in concrete analyses of specific technologies and specific cultural formations. Anyone interested in the history of technology or its empirical relation to culture ought to take a look at Levin's collection. -Mark Poster of University of California, Irvine Miriam Levin and the other authors in Cultures of Control show that 'control' and 'technology' have similar connotations and are nearly interchangeable. -Thomas P. Hughes of University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
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