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David Edgerton

The Shock Of The Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 Paperback – 10 Jan. 2008

by David Edgerton (Author)

4.2 61 ratings

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Standard histories of technology give tired accounts of the usual inventions, inventors, and dates, framing technology as the inevitable march of progress. They split history into ages - electrification, motorisation, and computerisation - and rarely ask whether anyone bothered to use these inventions at the time. Shock of the Old is not one of those histories.
Instead of asking when a technology came to be, David Edgerton asks when the average person started using it. He reveals that decades- and centuries-old technologies are often critical parts of modern achievements, and that old technologies can remain dominant long after they were supposedly superseded. Letters exist alongside emails and outlasted telegrams; we still make physical books and magazines despite the rise of the Internet - a belated rise considering that the technologies that made it possible was invented in 1965.
Shock of the Old forces us to reassess the significance of old inventions such as corrugated iron and sewing machines and rethink the relative importance we place on the invention of something new, its application, and its widespread adoption. It challenges the idea that we live in an era of ever increasing change and, interweaving political, economic and cultural history, teaches us to think critically about technology.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Profile Books
Publication date

10 Jan. 2008
Dimensions

12.8 x 1.8 x 19.8 cm
ISBN-10

1861973063
ISBN-13

978-1861973061
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Product description

Review

So the new is old, and the old is new! Marvellous stuff, and absolutely spot-on. ― Simon Jenkins

he eviscerates our obsession with novelty... -- Hugh Pearman ― The Sunday Times

newfangled things are sexy, but how significant are they?...Edgerton provides a corrective by emphasising some of the overlooked technologies that affect the lives of many. -- John Sparks ― Newsweek

David Edgerton's The Shock of the Old is a book I can use. I can take it in two hands and bash it over the heads of every techno-nerd, computer geek and neophiliac futurologist I meet. -- Simon Jenkins ― Guardian

...iconoclastic and thought-provoking book...he makes a strong case that accords with what Virgil identified around 25BC as a definitive human characteristic. Our lives consist of semper cedentia retro: always going forwards backwards. ― The Times

It's rare for a book to make you see the world differently, but this alternative history does exactly that on almost every page. ― Guardian

About the Author

Born in Montevideo in 1959, David Edgerton is one of Britain's leading historians, and has challenged conventional analyses of technology for 20 years. Currently the Hans Rausing Professor at Imperial College London, he writes for the broadsheet press and is a regular on television and radio. He lives in London.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Profile Books; Main edition (10 Jan. 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1861973063
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1861973061
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.8 x 1.8 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 501,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 779 in History of Engineering & Technology
- 19,331 in Social & Cultural History
- 25,111 in Popular Science

Customer reviews:
4.2 61 ratings

About the author

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David Edgerton

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David Edgerton is the Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History at King's College London. He is the author of a sequence of ground-breaking books on twentieth-century Britain: England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation (1991), republished as England and the Aeroplane: Militarism, Modernity and Machines (Penguin 2013); Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970 (1996), Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970 (2005), Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War (2011) and The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: a Twentieth-Century History (2018). He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (2006), which was re-issued in 2019.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

61 global ratings

5 star		54%
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2 star		5%
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John Fletcher

Yes but does it work?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 28 August 2016

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Many many years ago, when I first started reading about the Second World War in the East, I came across the surprising statistic that for the German Army the most important technology was not the tank, but the horse. Millions of horses provided the basic motive power for the Wehrmacht, even as tanks broke down and froze in the terrible cold. In other words, far from replacing the horse, the tank was a subordinate partner until the very end of the war, when, at least in the West, large numbers of transport vehicles were available for the first time.

David Egerton's book is at one level a useful corrective to the idea that technological changes take place quickly and completely, and so strikes a blow against the worship of so-called "innovation" which these days just seems to be away of making a quick fortune out of some technological novelty or other. What Egerton demonstrates is that technologies do not simply replace each other but exist alongside each other for long periods of time. A classic would be the bicycle which ought to have been replaced generations ago by the car, but in fact flourishes and in many cases is making a comeback. But in turn, this is because the technology of the bicycle as dramatically improved, and compared to the heavy awkward machines of my youth, today's are much more sophisticated and way almost nothing. This book will substantially change how you see the application of technology to daily life, and how far you are convinced by the endless rhetoric and ideology of "innovation". The conclusion, I think, is that most of us do not particularly want innovation, so much as wanting technology that is reliable and actually works.

8 people found this helpful

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JurgenW

Interesting viewpoint

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 16 November 2018

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Interesting and clarifying perhaps little biased towards war history

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 29 December 2008

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This book has been sitting on my desk for some weeks. I finished it a while ago, but wasn't sure how to review it, because I'm not sure exactly what the author's thesis is. The sub-title, 'Technology and Global History since 1900' accurate sums up the content, but it is almost an alternative history brought about by making a clear seperation between technology and innovation.

Given this seperation, the book points out that virtually all the innovations of the last century are based on technology dating back to the start of the last century. It's a neat idea, well researched and backed up. At that level it's a good read and a new perspective on technology and innovation. At the end of the day, though, the author doesn't really draw out any conclusions from his work, leaving the reader feeling frustrated and wondering what was in the author's mind.

8 people found this helpful

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markap

A great critique of current thinking on technology and innovation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 27 November 2018

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Provides a comprehensive narrative dispelling much of the current thinking on the value of 'innovations' versus technology and their use. Well written and easy to follow arguments. Good read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 16 December 2014

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I was disappointed. I grasped the point in the author's book about Britain's WW2 war machine straight away but as I read through this, I could not see a big outcome. True, he repeatedly makes the highly important point about reliance on old technologies rather than just the new stuff but...so what? Don't we know that? My bicycle is old-technology, my I-Pad newer. Once he has made the point that society uses both old and new stuff, where do I go from there as his sympathetic reader? I found the numerous examples quoted to become a bit boring in the end.

8 people found this helpful

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Vilibald W.

Less about history more about presence

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 28 December 2013

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Great book! Really opens ones eyes as it gives fresh look on technology and how we deal with it, what we use and so on. If you are interested on how our society works this is a definitely one of the must reads.

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Mr J

Straightforward and as expected

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 10 June 2019

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Happy with purchase – many thanks. Good book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 15 January 2019

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This book almost defines the term 'labouring a point'. The basic idea, that old technology hangs around a while after new technology is available, could be summed up in this sentence. Everything else is just repeated historical examples to illustrate the same point over and over and over again. The many and varied reasons why this might be the case are hinted at but then cast aside as they appear to get in his way. As each page goes by, it gets more tedious. By page 44 I had a flick forward to see if he came up with anything more substantive and found it was still chugging along in the same vein. Went to find another book.

2 people found this helpful

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The Shock Of The Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 Paperback – 10 Jan. 2008

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