Pub Date : 2024-07-19DOI: 10.1353/tech.2024.a933114
Sirri Emrah Üçer
<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire: A Critical History</em> by Burçe Çelik <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Sirri Emrah Üçer (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire: A Critical History</em><br/> By Burçe Çelik. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2023. Pp. 254. <p>Burçe Çelik’s book represents a novel and bold contribution to the field of Turkish studies by providing a comprehensive two-century-long history of telecommunications. Instead of focusing on individual networks, she introduces a conceptual framework that unifies singular networks within a temporal continuity. This contribution brings to mind Horwitz’s <em>Communication and Democratic Reform in South Africa</em> (2006), as Çelik adds topics of ownership and the development of material telecommunications infrastructure to the discursive analysis of communication. Her study is also in close resonance with the accounts of other critical Turkish communication scholars like Haluk Geray and Funda Başaran. The strength of the book comes from its long-term and multinetwork approach to Ottoman/Turkish communications/telecommunications history. However, this also exposes some areas open to criticism.</p> <p>Çelik’s analytical framework comprises both geopolitical and social elements. The geopolitical aspect encompasses topics such as the peripheralization of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey in the global capitalist division of labor, the material development of the telecommunications network, and the shift in ownership from the government to international companies. The social element of Çelik’s analysis divides Ottoman/Turkish history into two periods: what she calls the “non-capitalist modernization” before 1950 and the “transition to capitalism” after World War II. The social element also introduces “silenced communities,” including Armenians, Kurds, women (particularly working-class women), and progressive youth, as key actors in communication history, beyond the more prominent “noisy actors” such as the state, military, political elites, and “top-down” modernizers. Çelik argues that the “non-capitalist modernism” of the late Ottoman and early <strong>[End Page 1015]</strong> Republican periods was closely linked to reform efforts aimed at restoring the “circle of justice” within a social context characterized by an “oriental political society” where communities opposed the government, rather than a “Western-style civil society” with individuals opposing the government.</p> <p>Çelik introduces the concept of “capitalist imperialism” and mentions “noisy actors” such as international companies and organizations. However, her proximity to a political stance that views the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic as a militarist colonizer rather than a passive periphery limits the role assigned to international capital markets, companies, and organizations in the geopolitics of telecomm
{"title":"Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire: A Critical History by Burçe Çelik (review)","authors":"Sirri Emrah Üçer","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933114","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire: A Critical History</em> by Burçe Çelik <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Sirri Emrah Üçer (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire: A Critical History</em><br/> By Burçe Çelik. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2023. Pp. 254. <p>Burçe Çelik’s book represents a novel and bold contribution to the field of Turkish studies by providing a comprehensive two-century-long history of telecommunications. Instead of focusing on individual networks, she introduces a conceptual framework that unifies singular networks within a temporal continuity. This contribution brings to mind Horwitz’s <em>Communication and Democratic Reform in South Africa</em> (2006), as Çelik adds topics of ownership and the development of material telecommunications infrastructure to the discursive analysis of communication. Her study is also in close resonance with the accounts of other critical Turkish communication scholars like Haluk Geray and Funda Başaran. The strength of the book comes from its long-term and multinetwork approach to Ottoman/Turkish communications/telecommunications history. However, this also exposes some areas open to criticism.</p> <p>Çelik’s analytical framework comprises both geopolitical and social elements. The geopolitical aspect encompasses topics such as the peripheralization of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey in the global capitalist division of labor, the material development of the telecommunications network, and the shift in ownership from the government to international companies. The social element of Çelik’s analysis divides Ottoman/Turkish history into two periods: what she calls the “non-capitalist modernization” before 1950 and the “transition to capitalism” after World War II. The social element also introduces “silenced communities,” including Armenians, Kurds, women (particularly working-class women), and progressive youth, as key actors in communication history, beyond the more prominent “noisy actors” such as the state, military, political elites, and “top-down” modernizers. Çelik argues that the “non-capitalist modernism” of the late Ottoman and early <strong>[End Page 1015]</strong> Republican periods was closely linked to reform efforts aimed at restoring the “circle of justice” within a social context characterized by an “oriental political society” where communities opposed the government, rather than a “Western-style civil society” with individuals opposing the government.</p> <p>Çelik introduces the concept of “capitalist imperialism” and mentions “noisy actors” such as international companies and organizations. However, her proximity to a political stance that views the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic as a militarist colonizer rather than a passive periphery limits the role assigned to international capital markets, companies, and organizations in the geopolitics of telecomm","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-19DOI: 10.1353/tech.2024.a933126
Deac Rossell
<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Learning with Light and Shadows: Educational Lantern and Film Projection, 1860–1990</em> ed. by Nelleke Teughels and Kaat Wils <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Deac Rossell (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Learning with Light and Shadows: Educational Lantern and Film Projection, 1860–1990</em><br/> Edited by Nelleke Teughels and Kaat Wils. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023. Pp. 267. <p>The second of three books spawned by the nationally funded B-Magic collaborations between six universities in Belgium, arriving just after Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova’s <em>Faith in a Beam of Light</em> (2022; reviewed in the July 2023 issue of this journal) and before Kurt Vanhoutte and Leen Engelen’s <em>The Magic Lantern in Leisure, Entertainment and Popular Culture</em> (forthcoming), this volume with its two companions also announces the new Media Performance Histories series, as part of the Techne collection at Brepols Publishers. Concentrating on the classroom use of projected images in Belgium, this anthology follows its funded mandate with brief excursions to Switzerland, Britain, and Austria, which are academically funded separately. Very little context is given here to magic lantern culture before the founding of Belgium in 1830, and minimal attention is paid to pedagogical concepts used outside the country’s borders, so public lectures are recognized here as a dominant popular educational practice only in the second half of the nineteenth century (p. 51), and most institutional links are to the Belgian phenomena of university extensions and popular universities. True for Belgium, but this leaves aside other histories like that of the Mechanics’ Institutes in Britain, which began in the first half of the century with some 700 active institutes, serving over 120,000 members by 1851. Equally, the focus here on magic lantern slide projection disregards the optical bench used in many classrooms, a kind of disassembled magic lantern that supported projection of a variety of experiments as well as lantern slides, a common instrument in the period under examination, but which only appears in the book after 1919 in the teaching of Robert Pohl at Göttingen University (ch. 7).</p> <p>Several chapter authors note there is only a sparse literature relevant to the themes of the book, all of which are anthologies that are cited when relevant, including Charles Ackland and Haidee Wasson’s study of nontheatrical but not necessarily educational films, <em>Useful Cinema</em> (2011); Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, and Dan Streible’s wide-ranging <em>Learning with the Lights Off</em> (2012); Anne Quillien’s splendidly illustrated yet pedagogical <em>Lumineuses Projections!</em> (2016); and Martyn Jolly’s Australia-centric <em>The Magic Lantern at Work</em> (2020). <em>Learning with Light and Shadows</em> has some advantages over these prior works in its more concentrated focus, and it supplies much new specific literature that wi
{"title":"Learning with Light and Shadows: Educational Lantern and Film Projection, 1860–1990 ed. by Nelleke Teughels and Kaat Wils (review)","authors":"Deac Rossell","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933126","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Learning with Light and Shadows: Educational Lantern and Film Projection, 1860–1990</em> ed. by Nelleke Teughels and Kaat Wils <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Deac Rossell (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Learning with Light and Shadows: Educational Lantern and Film Projection, 1860–1990</em><br/> Edited by Nelleke Teughels and Kaat Wils. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023. Pp. 267. <p>The second of three books spawned by the nationally funded B-Magic collaborations between six universities in Belgium, arriving just after Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova’s <em>Faith in a Beam of Light</em> (2022; reviewed in the July 2023 issue of this journal) and before Kurt Vanhoutte and Leen Engelen’s <em>The Magic Lantern in Leisure, Entertainment and Popular Culture</em> (forthcoming), this volume with its two companions also announces the new Media Performance Histories series, as part of the Techne collection at Brepols Publishers. Concentrating on the classroom use of projected images in Belgium, this anthology follows its funded mandate with brief excursions to Switzerland, Britain, and Austria, which are academically funded separately. Very little context is given here to magic lantern culture before the founding of Belgium in 1830, and minimal attention is paid to pedagogical concepts used outside the country’s borders, so public lectures are recognized here as a dominant popular educational practice only in the second half of the nineteenth century (p. 51), and most institutional links are to the Belgian phenomena of university extensions and popular universities. True for Belgium, but this leaves aside other histories like that of the Mechanics’ Institutes in Britain, which began in the first half of the century with some 700 active institutes, serving over 120,000 members by 1851. Equally, the focus here on magic lantern slide projection disregards the optical bench used in many classrooms, a kind of disassembled magic lantern that supported projection of a variety of experiments as well as lantern slides, a common instrument in the period under examination, but which only appears in the book after 1919 in the teaching of Robert Pohl at Göttingen University (ch. 7).</p> <p>Several chapter authors note there is only a sparse literature relevant to the themes of the book, all of which are anthologies that are cited when relevant, including Charles Ackland and Haidee Wasson’s study of nontheatrical but not necessarily educational films, <em>Useful Cinema</em> (2011); Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, and Dan Streible’s wide-ranging <em>Learning with the Lights Off</em> (2012); Anne Quillien’s splendidly illustrated yet pedagogical <em>Lumineuses Projections!</em> (2016); and Martyn Jolly’s Australia-centric <em>The Magic Lantern at Work</em> (2020). <em>Learning with Light and Shadows</em> has some advantages over these prior works in its more concentrated focus, and it supplies much new specific literature that wi","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"128 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-19DOI: 10.1353/tech.2024.a933137
E. Jerry Jessee
<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, the Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960</em> by Neil S. Oatsvall <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> E. Jerry Jessee (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, the Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960</em><br/> By Neil S. Oatsvall. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2023. Pp. 264. <p>The world was irrevocably changed on July 16, 1945, when the Manhattan Project detonated the world’s first atomic bomb (Trinity) in the desert of central New Mexico. Three weeks later Hiroshima lay in ruins, strikingly demonstrating the devastating power that scientists had managed to wrest from the atom.</p> <p>In the eighty years since Trinity, historians have produced a vast literature documenting how efforts to confront a future of apocalyptic nuclear weaponry utterly transformed society and politics. One major consequence of the nuclear apocalyptic imaginary, as Donald Worster noted, was the rise of environmental consciousness: “The Age of Ecology began on the desert outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945,” he memorably declared in <em>Nature’s Economy</em> (1977). Since then, scholars have deepened Worster’s formulation of the connections between the atomic age and the age of ecology by showing how scientists’ eagerness to work with nuclear technologies shaped the growth and influence of the “environmental sciences” (Hagen, <em>An Entangled Bank</em>, 1992; Rainger, “‘A Wonderful Oceanographic Tool,’” 2004). More recently, driven perhaps by our contemporary confrontation with the climate apocalypse, Jacob Darwin Hamblin (<em>Arming Mother Nature</em>, 2013), Joseph Masco (“Bad Weather,” 2010), and Matthias Dörries (“The Politics of Atmospheric Sciences,” 2011) have suggested compellingly that the perceived world-altering power of nuclear weaponry provided a critical context through which visions of global environmental vulnerability, planetary threat, and perhaps the very idea of the “global environment” came to be. <strong>[End Page 1059]</strong></p> <p>It is within this heady research that <em>Atomic Environments</em> offers an examination of the interplay between nuclear technologies and the environment from the origins of the bomb to 1960. The book opens in the Nevada desert with the 1953 Encore test to illustrate “how environmental considerations impacted the development of the US nuclear program” (p. 3). For this test, officials uprooted 145 ponderosa trees and placed them in concrete footings to simulate a forest, which was leveled when Encore detonated a mile away. Destroying the constructed forest informed weapons testers’ understanding of the bomb. “Ecological knowledge,” Oatsvall claims, “. . . buttressed nuclear science” (p. 2). The main thrust of the book, however, centers much less on the scientists who utilized nuclear technologies to construct knowledge of the environment. The book does not ma
{"title":"Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, the Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960 by Neil S. Oatsvall (review)","authors":"E. Jerry Jessee","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933137","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, the Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960</em> by Neil S. Oatsvall <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> E. Jerry Jessee (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Atomic Environments: Nuclear Technologies, the Natural World, and Policymaking, 1945–1960</em><br/> By Neil S. Oatsvall. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2023. Pp. 264. <p>The world was irrevocably changed on July 16, 1945, when the Manhattan Project detonated the world’s first atomic bomb (Trinity) in the desert of central New Mexico. Three weeks later Hiroshima lay in ruins, strikingly demonstrating the devastating power that scientists had managed to wrest from the atom.</p> <p>In the eighty years since Trinity, historians have produced a vast literature documenting how efforts to confront a future of apocalyptic nuclear weaponry utterly transformed society and politics. One major consequence of the nuclear apocalyptic imaginary, as Donald Worster noted, was the rise of environmental consciousness: “The Age of Ecology began on the desert outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945,” he memorably declared in <em>Nature’s Economy</em> (1977). Since then, scholars have deepened Worster’s formulation of the connections between the atomic age and the age of ecology by showing how scientists’ eagerness to work with nuclear technologies shaped the growth and influence of the “environmental sciences” (Hagen, <em>An Entangled Bank</em>, 1992; Rainger, “‘A Wonderful Oceanographic Tool,’” 2004). More recently, driven perhaps by our contemporary confrontation with the climate apocalypse, Jacob Darwin Hamblin (<em>Arming Mother Nature</em>, 2013), Joseph Masco (“Bad Weather,” 2010), and Matthias Dörries (“The Politics of Atmospheric Sciences,” 2011) have suggested compellingly that the perceived world-altering power of nuclear weaponry provided a critical context through which visions of global environmental vulnerability, planetary threat, and perhaps the very idea of the “global environment” came to be. <strong>[End Page 1059]</strong></p> <p>It is within this heady research that <em>Atomic Environments</em> offers an examination of the interplay between nuclear technologies and the environment from the origins of the bomb to 1960. The book opens in the Nevada desert with the 1953 Encore test to illustrate “how environmental considerations impacted the development of the US nuclear program” (p. 3). For this test, officials uprooted 145 ponderosa trees and placed them in concrete footings to simulate a forest, which was leveled when Encore detonated a mile away. Destroying the constructed forest informed weapons testers’ understanding of the bomb. “Ecological knowledge,” Oatsvall claims, “. . . buttressed nuclear science” (p. 2). The main thrust of the book, however, centers much less on the scientists who utilized nuclear technologies to construct knowledge of the environment. The book does not ma","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-09DOI: 10.1353/tech.2024.a926325
Mónica Humeres
<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica</em> by Ignacio Siles <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Mónica Humeres (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica</em> By Ignacio Siles. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023. Pp. 234. <p>What does it mean for people in a Latin American country to live in a datafied society? Bearing this question in mind, Ignacio Siles devoted five years to empirically study how people make sense of algorithms in Costa Rica, focusing on the use of three platforms: Netflix, Spotify, and TikTok. In this book, situated at the intersection of classic communication studies, human-machine communication studies, and the history of digital cultures, Siles demonstrates how individuals interact within a logic of "mutual domestication." Considering that algorithms are designed to gather information and platforms have the specific purpose of keeping users engaged, his research strives to show how users, far from being passive victims, also use these technologies for their own purposes.</p> <p>While the theoretical arguments against technological determinism that inspire this study (ch. 1) may not surprise historians of technology, the subsequent subjects at hand developed in the following chapters, will indeed be of inspiration as the empirical discussion illustrates how users can transform algorithmic agency, changing the direction and form in which technology operates, while it also intervenes in their cultural practices. The five dynamics of domestication, which give titles to chapters two through six, are conceptualized as personalization, integration, rituals, conversion, and resistance. They shed light on the specific ways in which individuals comprehend and interact with the algorithms of these platforms.</p> <p>Although the study is firmly rooted in Costa Rica's reality, it has relevance beyond this particular national context. While an increasing number of scholars recognize that the role of technology in social change cannot be assessed independently of its context of interpretation and use, most research continues to prioritize the history <em>of</em> algorithmic development. Thus, Siles's book can be seen as a complement to works like J. L. Chabert and E. Barbin's <em>A History of Algorithms</em> (1999) or E. Finn's <em>What Algorithms Want</em> (2017), contributing to the understanding of the complex relationships between algorithmic production, circulation, and consumption.</p> <p>Notably, Siles makes us consider that the appropriation of algorithms is built on the depths of the desire for connection, closeness, and two-sided communication. A wide range of illustrated cases leads us to think that users feel that the close relationship of mutual recognition between content creators and audiences, historically disrupted by mass media technology, is now being reassembled by these new algorithmic mediations. As
评论者 与算法共存：Ignacio Siles 著 Mónica Humeres (bio) Living with Algorithms：哥斯达黎加的机构和用户文化 作者：Ignacio Siles。马萨诸塞州剑桥市：麻省理工学院出版社，2023 年。第 234 页。对于一个拉丁美洲国家的人们来说，生活在一个数据化的社会中意味着什么？带着这个问题，伊格纳西奥-西莱斯花了五年时间，以三个平台的使用为重点，实证研究了哥斯达黎加人如何理解算法：Netflix、Spotify 和 TikTok。在这本书中，西里斯在经典传播研究、人机传播研究和数字文化史的交叉点上，展示了个人如何在 "相互驯化 "的逻辑中互动。考虑到算法的设计目的是收集信息，而平台的特定目的是让用户参与其中，他的研究力图展示用户如何非但不是被动的受害者，还利用这些技术达到自己的目的。尽管本研究（第 1 章）所依据的反对技术决定论的理论论据可能不会让技术史学家感到惊讶，但接下来各章中的研究课题确实会给他们带来启发，因为实证讨论说明了用户如何转变算法代理，改变技术运作的方向和形式，同时也干预他们的文化实践。驯化的五种动力是第二章至第六章的标题，它们被概念化为个性化、整合、仪式、转换和抵抗。它们揭示了个人理解这些平台的算法并与之互动的具体方式。虽然这项研究牢牢扎根于哥斯达黎加的现实，但其现实意义却超越了这一特定的国家背景。虽然越来越多的学者认识到，评估技术在社会变革中的作用不能脱离其解释和使用的背景，但大多数研究仍然优先考虑算法发展的历史。因此，西尔斯的这本书可以看作是对 J. L. Chabert 和 E. Barbin 的《算法史》（A History of Algorithms，1999 年）或 E. Finn 的《算法想要什么》（What Algorithms Want，2017 年）等著作的补充，有助于理解算法生产、流通和消费之间的复杂关系。值得注意的是，西尔斯让我们思考到，对算法的占有是建立在对联系、亲近和双向交流的深度渴望之上的。大量图文并茂的案例让我们想到，用户认为内容创作者与受众之间相互认可的密切关系在历史上曾被大众传媒技术所破坏，而现在这些新的算法媒介正在重新组合这种关系。正如爱德华兹-贝洛（J. Edwards-Bello）在《La chica del Crillón》（1935 年）一书中形象地写道："如果你看过当年的市立剧院。那时的观众很重要，我们可以在街上看到女演员。我们认识她们，她们也认识我们。反观现在！电影院！"。带着对亲近和互惠的热切渴望，本书讲述了当用户感到日常算法非常了解他们并采取相应行动时，他们感到满意的故事。有趣的是，本书揭示出，用户报告说，被算法认可的感觉远非技术的程序品质，而是通过主动塑造实现的。在这方面，书中提供了无数用户照顾算法的精彩案例。例如，书中提供了用户如何通过分享 TikTok 上的内容来训练算法，使其返回更多的内容；或者，对用户来说，点击 Netflix 推荐的内容就是向机器表达感激之情；甚至 Spotify 也是一种管理个人和集体情绪的技术。因此，个人通过算法采取行动这一事实意味着，他们本身就是算法中介的一部分。然而，这不应与用户不加批判地接受混为一谈，因为对某些规则的拒绝、应对这些规则的策略以及对算法所发挥的力量的认识赋予了整整一章的生命（第 6 章）。出现的一个问题是，在 COVID-19 禁闭之前开始并在禁闭期间结束的实地调查的时间维度，是否可以在分析中得到考虑？
{"title":"Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica by Ignacio Siles (review)","authors":"Mónica Humeres","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926325","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica</em> by Ignacio Siles <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Mónica Humeres (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica</em> By Ignacio Siles. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023. Pp. 234. <p>What does it mean for people in a Latin American country to live in a datafied society? Bearing this question in mind, Ignacio Siles devoted five years to empirically study how people make sense of algorithms in Costa Rica, focusing on the use of three platforms: Netflix, Spotify, and TikTok. In this book, situated at the intersection of classic communication studies, human-machine communication studies, and the history of digital cultures, Siles demonstrates how individuals interact within a logic of \"mutual domestication.\" Considering that algorithms are designed to gather information and platforms have the specific purpose of keeping users engaged, his research strives to show how users, far from being passive victims, also use these technologies for their own purposes.</p> <p>While the theoretical arguments against technological determinism that inspire this study (ch. 1) may not surprise historians of technology, the subsequent subjects at hand developed in the following chapters, will indeed be of inspiration as the empirical discussion illustrates how users can transform algorithmic agency, changing the direction and form in which technology operates, while it also intervenes in their cultural practices. The five dynamics of domestication, which give titles to chapters two through six, are conceptualized as personalization, integration, rituals, conversion, and resistance. They shed light on the specific ways in which individuals comprehend and interact with the algorithms of these platforms.</p> <p>Although the study is firmly rooted in Costa Rica's reality, it has relevance beyond this particular national context. While an increasing number of scholars recognize that the role of technology in social change cannot be assessed independently of its context of interpretation and use, most research continues to prioritize the history <em>of</em> algorithmic development. Thus, Siles's book can be seen as a complement to works like J. L. Chabert and E. Barbin's <em>A History of Algorithms</em> (1999) or E. Finn's <em>What Algorithms Want</em> (2017), contributing to the understanding of the complex relationships between algorithmic production, circulation, and consumption.</p> <p>Notably, Siles makes us consider that the appropriation of algorithms is built on the depths of the desire for connection, closeness, and two-sided communication. A wide range of illustrated cases leads us to think that users feel that the close relationship of mutual recognition between content creators and audiences, historically disrupted by mass media technology, is now being reassembled by these new algorithmic mediations. As ","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-09DOI: 10.1353/tech.2024.a926317
Damir Galaz-Mandakovic, Francisco Rivera
abstract:
In 1926, during an economic crisis that severely impacted the mining industry, Guggenheim Brothers, the Guggenheim family business, implemented a new technological system to extract saltpeter from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Known as the Guggenheim system, this cutting-edge technological innovation had a significant impact on regional society and facilitated the introduction of Chilean saltpeter into the global fertilizer market. For this system to succeed, however, it had to incorporate a sociopolitical strategy based on a highly hierarchical and well-controlled labor force. Through their political and cultural influence in the region, the Guggenheim family's industry transformed a remote area into a state periphery, creating new ways of inhabiting the desert within a strict framework in which workers' lives were regulated by company-imposed labor discipline. With more political power than the state, the Guggenheim family sought to suppress any social agency deemed dangerous to the production of saltpeter.
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Pub Date : 2024-05-09DOI: 10.1353/tech.2024.a926313
Boyd Ruamcharoen
abstract:
As the U.S. military became embroiled in "jungle warfare" across the Pacific during World War II, it was caught off guard by the rapid deterioration of materials and equipment in the tropics, where the air was hot, humid, and teeming with fungal spores. This article tells the story of how American scientists and engineers understood the "tropical deterioration" of portable radios and electronics and developed techniques to counteract it. Examining scientific efforts to prevent tropical decay reveals how exposure to tropical conditions during World War II shaped the development of portable electronics. Contributing to envirotech history and environmental media studies, this article uncovers the importance of climate proofing to the history of electronics miniaturization. Tropical deterioration, furthermore, provides a technology-focused lens for enriching our historical understanding of the tropics as an environmental imaginary.
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Pub Date : 2024-05-09DOI: 10.1353/tech.2024.a926310
Peter Soland
abstract:
Diego Rivera's mural El hombre controlador del universo (1934) can be read as foreshadowing the anxieties and optimisms about atomic power that shaped popular culture in Mexico during the nuclear age. In epic fashion, Rivera's vision affirms the agency of ordinary people in the face of a technological epoch while eerily anticipating the bipolarity of the Cold War, themes that would be revisited by Julián Soler in his film Santo contra Blue Demon en la Atlantida (1969), which bears out the prophecy of Rivera's mural.
摘要:迭戈-里维拉（Diego Rivera）的壁画《宇宙的控制者》（El hombre controlador del universo，1934 年）可以被解读为预示着墨西哥核时代流行文化中对原子能的焦虑和乐观。里维拉的构想以史诗般的方式肯定了普通人在面对技术时代时的能动性，同时令人不安地预示了冷战的两极化，胡里安-索莱尔（Julián Soler）在其电影《Santo contra Blue Demon en la Atlantida》（1969 年）中重新审视了这些主题，该电影印证了里维拉壁画的预言。
{"title":"Cover Essay: La Gente, Controllers of the Universe","authors":"Peter Soland","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926310","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>abstract:</p><p>Diego Rivera's mural <i>El hombre controlador del universo</i> (1934) can be read as foreshadowing the anxieties and optimisms about atomic power that shaped popular culture in Mexico during the nuclear age. In epic fashion, Rivera's vision affirms the agency of ordinary people in the face of a technological epoch while eerily anticipating the bipolarity of the Cold War, themes that would be revisited by Julián Soler in his film <i>Santo contra Blue Demon en la Atlantida</i> (1969), which bears out the prophecy of Rivera's mural.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"191 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-09DOI: 10.1353/tech.2024.a926322
Diego Arango López
<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>El sol al servicio de la humanidad: Historia de la energía solar en Chile [The sun in the service of humanity: History of solar energy in Chile]</em> ed. by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Diego Arango López (bio) </li> </ul> <em>El sol al servicio de la humanidad: Historia de la energía solar en Chile [The sun in the service of humanity: History of solar energy in Chile]</em> Edited by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva. Santiago de Chile: RIL editores, 2019. Pp. 218. <p><em>El sol al servicio de la humanidad</em>, edited by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva, proposes a general history of the sun in Chile. It has 218 pages in eight chapters written by twelve different authors. This diversity is, precisely, one of the main assets of the book. However, this collective nature also causes its main weaknesses. In general, the book addresses the social, scientific, and technological relationship between a part of Chilean society and the sun, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. To introduce the book, the editors point out that in response to the current global climate crisis, societies are actively seeking new forms of nonfossil energies. This has renewed attention to solar energy and especially to photovoltaic technology. And recently, this has stimulated the interest for historical research on the relationship between human beings and their energy sources.</p> <p>Nevertheless, beyond the traditional claim of interdisciplinarity in collective works, the book does not explicitly clarify how it addresses the epistemological challenges of working from disciplines as dissimilar as history and engineering. Indeed, the main unresolved challenge of the book is to generate a theoretically coherent argument beyond the interpretative and methodological differences of each author.</p> <p>In two short chapters, Nelson Arellano Escudero elaborates the book's most compelling argument. His research proposes a four-stage periodization of the history of solar energy in Chile and demonstrates that, from its first moments on a global scale, Chile made important contributions to the global field of solar energy in terms of ideas, knowledge, and the circulation of scientists. Moreover, he proposes an epistemological and methodological approach that he calls "intersected scales," which allows him to rigorously assume the multidimensionality of the factors that intervene in the history of solar energy. In fact, this author clearly demonstrates that the simple availability of diverse technologies to "harvest" the sun did not guarantee the development of a sustainable solar energy industry. He argues that the reasons for the underdevelopment of solar technologies in Chile are not technological, scientific, or even natural; on the contrary, they are cultural and social. Thus, the research stresses that the reproduction
评论者 El sol al servicio de la humanidad: Historia de la energía solar en Chile [The sun in the service of humanity: History of solar energy in Chile] ed., by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva Diego Arango López (bio)由 Mauricio Osses、Cecilia Ibarra 和 Bárbara Silva 编辑 Diego Arango López (bio) El sol al servicio de la humanidad: Historia de la energía solar en Chile [The sun in the service of humanity: History of solar energy in Chile] Edited by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva.智利圣地亚哥：RIL editores, 2019.第 218 页。El sol al servicio de la humanidad》由毛里西奥-奥塞斯、塞西莉亚-伊巴拉和巴尔巴拉-席尔瓦编著，提出了智利的太阳通史。该书共 218 页，分为八个章节，由十二位不同的作者撰写。这种多样性正是该书的主要优点之一。然而，这种集体性也造成了它的主要缺点。总的来说，该书探讨了从十九世纪末至今智利社会的一部分与太阳之间的社会、科学和技术关系。在介绍本书时，编者指出，为了应对当前的全球气候危机，社会正在积极寻求新形式的非化石能源。这使人们重新关注太阳能，尤其是光伏技术。最近，这又激发了人们对人类与能源之间关系进行历史研究的兴趣。然而，除了集体著作中传统的跨学科主张外，该书并未明确说明如何应对来自历史学和工程学等不同学科的认识论挑战。事实上，该书尚未解决的主要挑战是，如何超越每位作者在解释和方法论上的差异，提出理论上一致的论点。在两个简短的章节中，纳尔逊-阿雷利亚诺-埃斯库德罗阐述了本书最有说服力的论点。他的研究提出了智利太阳能发展史的四个阶段，并证明了智利从开始进入全球范围开始，就在思想、知识和科学家流动方面为全球太阳能领域做出了重要贡献。此外，他还提出了一种他称之为 "交叉尺度 "的认识论和方法论方法，这种方法使他能够严格假设介入太阳能历史的各种因素的多维性。事实上，作者清楚地表明，仅仅拥有 "收获 "太阳的各种技术并不能保证太阳能产业的可持续发展。他认为，智利太阳能技术发展不足的原因不在于技术、科学，甚至也不在于自然，而在于文化和社会。因此，该研究强调，将太阳能和光伏技术视为人类救星的表 [完 677 页] 示再现，为发展负担得起的、民主的太阳能产业设置了重大障碍。此外，这些神话还掩盖了导致废弃太阳能资源和技术的历史原因。此外，奥塞斯、米里亚姆-罗斯和罗伯托-隆达内利还探讨了智利的太阳能辐照度测量和记录技术。作者描述了用于生成辐照度定量信息的仪器的技术特点。他们非常清楚地解释了每种仪器的特点、操作、优点和缺点，并详细介绍了它们的一些主要用途。此外，他们还表明，智利积极并迅速地参与了关于如何测量地球上太阳能量的全球讨论。事实上，所有的太阳辐照度测量仪器，如日光仪、火成仪和比日计等，都可以在智利找到历史出处，并与使用这些仪器的当地和国际科学网络联系起来。随后，罗斯、佩德罗-萨米恩托和伊巴拉解释了如何将太阳辐射转化为可用能量。为此，他们统计了智利学术史上有关太阳能的论文数量，并开展了一项描述性工作。更确切地说，他们用清晰易懂的语言向不熟悉的读者描述了智利历史上太阳能的技术和应用。此外，罗伯托-罗曼和伊巴拉还解释了在 1973 年独裁统治期间的困难条件下，太阳能产业的研究和发展是如何运作的。具体而言，他们证明了新自由主义和独裁国家...
{"title":"El sol al servicio de la humanidad: Historia de la energía solar en Chile [The sun in the service of humanity: History of solar energy in Chile] ed. by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva (review)","authors":"Diego Arango López","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926322","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>El sol al servicio de la humanidad: Historia de la energía solar en Chile [The sun in the service of humanity: History of solar energy in Chile]</em> ed. by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Diego Arango López (bio) </li> </ul> <em>El sol al servicio de la humanidad: Historia de la energía solar en Chile [The sun in the service of humanity: History of solar energy in Chile]</em> Edited by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva. Santiago de Chile: RIL editores, 2019. Pp. 218. <p><em>El sol al servicio de la humanidad</em>, edited by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva, proposes a general history of the sun in Chile. It has 218 pages in eight chapters written by twelve different authors. This diversity is, precisely, one of the main assets of the book. However, this collective nature also causes its main weaknesses. In general, the book addresses the social, scientific, and technological relationship between a part of Chilean society and the sun, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. To introduce the book, the editors point out that in response to the current global climate crisis, societies are actively seeking new forms of nonfossil energies. This has renewed attention to solar energy and especially to photovoltaic technology. And recently, this has stimulated the interest for historical research on the relationship between human beings and their energy sources.</p> <p>Nevertheless, beyond the traditional claim of interdisciplinarity in collective works, the book does not explicitly clarify how it addresses the epistemological challenges of working from disciplines as dissimilar as history and engineering. Indeed, the main unresolved challenge of the book is to generate a theoretically coherent argument beyond the interpretative and methodological differences of each author.</p> <p>In two short chapters, Nelson Arellano Escudero elaborates the book's most compelling argument. His research proposes a four-stage periodization of the history of solar energy in Chile and demonstrates that, from its first moments on a global scale, Chile made important contributions to the global field of solar energy in terms of ideas, knowledge, and the circulation of scientists. Moreover, he proposes an epistemological and methodological approach that he calls \"intersected scales,\" which allows him to rigorously assume the multidimensionality of the factors that intervene in the history of solar energy. In fact, this author clearly demonstrates that the simple availability of diverse technologies to \"harvest\" the sun did not guarantee the development of a sustainable solar energy industry. He argues that the reasons for the underdevelopment of solar technologies in Chile are not technological, scientific, or even natural; on the contrary, they are cultural and social. Thus, the research stresses that the reproduction ","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-09DOI: 10.1353/tech.2024.a926338
Kjetil Fallan
<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Transparency: The Material History of an Idea</em> by Daniel Jütte <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Kjetil Fallan (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Transparency: The Material History of an Idea</em> By Daniel Jütte. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2023. Pp. 512. <p>The scope of Daniel Jütte's material history of the idea of transparency is daunting and might at first seem excessively so. Covering antiquity to the present, and with no clear-cut geographical demarcation, the study is instead defined by a single idea and a single material. Immediately narrowing it down further to equate glass with plate glass, or more precisely glass windows, and declaring that the idea of "transparency first and foremost has been an architectural experience" (p. 6), the project takes on more manageable—but no less impressive—dimensions. For students of material culture, this quick sidelining of nonarchitectural vitreous transparency (think of eyeglasses, drinking vessels, lighting fixtures, etc.) can appear slightly dismissive but ultimately comes off as justifiable in the name of coherency and clarity of argument.</p> <p>A key ambition of this book is to problematize the teleological bent of conventional narratives of how glass windows became a defining feature of our built environment. This is pursued chiefly by reconceptualizing the historical development of architectural glass as a complex movement of ebbs and flows, of fits and starts, of forces and counterforces. It is a long and winding road Jütte guides us along. Technological advances in the production of plate glass are given due attention, but the book places greater significance on the social, aesthetic, and material values assigned to glass when explaining its changing status. We learn that when glass was first used to seal windows in ancient Rome, it was a niche product primarily applied in bath houses, where it was particularly important to let light in without letting heat out. But it was a very different kind of building that for centuries would become the main arena for the discourse on architectural glass: the church. In explaining the extraordinary role of glass windows in church architecture, Jütte turns to the dogma of "divine light" in Christian theology. Crucially, the function of glass windows in churches was to let that light into the room, not to provide views of the outside. The equation of architectural glass with transparency in the metaphorical sense would have to await the emergence of glass windows one could actually see through, as well as the increasing articulation of "openness" as an intellectual ideal from the Reformation to the Enlightenment onward. Jütte navigates these open waters in confident and convincing ways, and he skillfully draws on a vast array of source material, from travelogues and architectural treaties to poetry and marketing material.</p> <p>One of the book's great strengths is the way it shows how
审查人： 透明度：丹尼尔-尤特（Daniel Jütte）的《思想的物质史》（The Material History of an Idea by Daniel Jütte Kjetil Fallan (bio) Transparency：一个理念的物质史》，丹尼尔-尤特著。纽黑文和伦敦：耶鲁大学出版社，2023 年。页码512.丹尼尔-尤特 (Daniel Jütte) 的这本《透明理念的物质史》范围之广令人生畏，乍看之下似乎有些过分。这项研究涵盖了从古至今的各个时期，没有明确的地域划分，而是以单一的理念和单一的材料来界定。研究范围立即进一步缩小，将玻璃等同于平板玻璃，更确切地说，是玻璃窗，并宣称 "透明的概念首先是一种建筑体验"（第 6 页），从而使该项目变得更加易于管理，但也同样令人印象深刻。对于研究物质文化的学生来说，这种对非建筑玻璃体透明度（如眼镜、酒具、照明设备等）的快速忽略可能会显得有些轻视，但最终为了论证的连贯性和清晰度，这种忽略还是情有可原的。本书的一个主要目标是质疑关于玻璃窗如何成为我们建筑环境的一个决定性特征的传统叙事的目的论倾向。这主要是通过重新认识建筑玻璃的历史发展，将其视为一个起伏、起伏、力量与反力量的复杂运动。这是一条漫长而曲折的道路，尤特引领我们一路前行。书中对平板玻璃生产技术的进步给予了应有的关注，但在解释玻璃地位的变化时，书中更重视赋予玻璃的社会、美学和物质价值。我们了解到，当玻璃在古罗马首次被用来密封窗户时，它只是一种小众产品，主要应用于澡堂，在那里，让光线进入而不放出热量尤为重要。但几个世纪以来，一种截然不同的建筑成为了建筑玻璃的主要讨论场所：教堂。在解释玻璃窗在教堂建筑中的非凡作用时，Jütte 引用了基督教神学中 "神圣之光 "的教条。最重要的是，教堂玻璃窗的功能是让光线进入室内，而不是提供外部景观。将建筑玻璃等同于隐喻意义上的透明，需要等待人们能够真正看透玻璃窗的出现，以及从宗教改革到启蒙运动，"开放 "作为一种思想理想的日益明确。尤特以自信和令人信服的方式驾驭着这些开放的水域，他巧妙地利用了大量的原始资料，从游记和建筑条约到诗歌和营销材料。本书的一大亮点是，它展示了透明建筑如何在兑现健康、快乐和启迪的承诺的同时，也带来了痛苦和焦虑。在这一点上，一个特别好但也特别阴险的例子是，有一章讨论了玻璃建筑是如何 [完 711 页] 以同样的热情为极权主义政权服务的，就像它为民主政权服务一样，把洞察力变成了监视，把洞察力变成了暴露（第 14 章）。简而言之，透明性与现代主义设计本身一样，都是意识形态上的滥觞。透明度主要是一部西方文化史。对前现代和现代早期某些 "非西方 "地点的简短游览提醒人们，玻璃并不总是、也不是随处可见，甚至不是首选的窗户密封技术。这些提示很好地反驳了一般论点，即是一系列社会、文化、宗教、经济、技术和生态原因最终确立了建筑玻璃作为透明材料和隐喻的首要地位，并最终超越了欧洲。然而，在整本书中，地理重点仍然相当狭窄，例子很少涉及（今天的）意大利、法国、德国、瑞士和英国以外的地区。鉴于 Jütte 指出 "玻璃建筑已成为一种全球现象"（第 383 页），如果在涉及十九世纪至今的最后四章中采用更多样化的案例研究样本，包括玻璃的功能和意义等，将会加强他的论点。
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Pub Date : 2024-05-09DOI: 10.1353/tech.2024.a926352
Sarah Kriger
<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Theater of Electricity: Technology and Spectacle in the Late 19th Century</em> by Ulf Otto <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Sarah Kriger (bio) </li> </ul> <em>The Theater of Electricity: Technology and Spectacle in the Late 19th Century</em> By Ulf Otto. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2023. Pp. xxvii + 314. <p>Ulf Otto's <em>The Theater of Electricity</em> examines a wide range of electrical presentations and technologies in use on the western European stage in the titular time period. Geographically, Otto examines mainly German cases, although the book also covers certain performances in France and England. His case studies include examples from opera, spectacular theater, dance, and technological exhibitions. Using these, Otto analyzes how electrical technologies, such as carbon-arc and incandescent lights, were integrated into and developed within theatrical material culture and how famous performances involving these and other technologies both influenced and were influenced by the cultural meaning of this new source of power. He is interested in particular in what he calls the "aesthetic regime" of electricity, which makes it possible to reconcile then-developing modernism with industrial materiality by permitting audiences and artists to avoid directly perceiving the labor that made electrical power possible.</p> <p>Otto shows the collaborative influences of theater, culture, and electrical technologies through eclectic historical examples; in fact, <em>The Theater of Electricity</em> often feels densely packed with these examples, each one seeming as though it could be expanded into a more detailed study. He draws on a rich variety of primary and secondary sources, exploring his thesis from many angles. Importantly, he is careful not only to describe the effects of electrical technologies on audiences and performers but also to integrate the backstage engineers and technicians to provide a fuller picture.</p> <p>However, for scholars who focus on the technological, not the theatrical, this wide-ranging approach is sometimes disorienting. This is in part because the author aims this book at an audience familiar with histories of theater but less so with histories of technology. His historiological purpose, he explains, is to criticize the tendency of history of theater to treat science and technology as distinct entities developed in the world outside the theater and then adapted for theatrical practice. Instead, he argues through example, performance histories must regard theater and technologies as interconnected, each influencing the other within the larger context of social, cultural, and economical changes. He explicitly incorporates approaches learned from histories of technology, such as Morus's work on electrical demonstrations in Victorian England, and integrates STS concepts, such as Latour's actor-network theory. Because Otto assumes readers' background in historiographie
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