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Books and Arts

Nature 446, 980-981 (26 April 2007) | doi:10.1038/446980a; Published online 25 April 2007

Open Innovation Challenges

naturejobs

A user's guide to technology

Andrew Nahum1

BOOK REVIEWEDThe Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900

by David Edgerton

Profile/Oxford University Press: 2007. 320 pp. £18.99/$26

As an academic discipline, the history of technology has spent many decades refining models of technological change. There has been a move from a relatively deterministic 'engineering darwinism' to considering technologies, at least in part, as being elicited and selected in the light of social values, aspirations and prejudices.