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• W4366809507 abstract "technology and culture Book Reviews 235 in 20th-century slide projectors, movie projectors, and cathode-ray tubes or television screens. Hankins and Silverman include chapters devoted to graphs and automatic recording instruments, the stereoscope and the depiction of three-dimensional photographic images, and the long struggle in the 19th century to build a machine to imitate the human voice. In each of these cases, gadgets inspired by magic or entertainment evolved into accepted scientific instruments. Also in each case, Han­ kins and Silverman show how the study of marginal instruments can help us to understand the role of instruments in the modern scien­ tific enterprise. This imaginative and intellectually stimulating book reminds us that artifacts have an intellectual context, as well as a social one, and that a thick vein of the irrational runs through all of technology. Historians of technology may wish to contemplate the significance of these findings. George Basalla Dr. Basalla teaches the history of science and technology at the University of Delaware. The Prometheus Complex: Man’s Obsession with Superior Technology. By Hans van de Braak. Amersfoort., The Netherlands: Enzo Press, 1995. Pp. 209; figures, notes, bibliography, index. NLG 115.00 (hardcover) NLG 59.00 (paper). Proud Prometheus goads the gods, stealing their fire and daring to compete with them. So humanity constantly goes after the divine. That is a daunting but noble model for why we engineer fancier and faster machines. But, Hans van de Braak argues, we don’tjust do it to get ahead in the material world. We are obsessed, we are seduced, and we use technology to impress and seduce ourselves. Technology is sexy. We always want more. The insatiable species overruns the world. Van de Braak borrows this central idea from Gaston Bachelard, the French philosopher who evoked in poetic language how innova­ tion emerges from reverie and feeling. “Thus, fiery love-making would have served as a model for rubbing two pieces of wood.” We set our hearts on fire before we know how to rub two sticks together. “Prometheus should be understood as a vigorous lover rather than an intelligent philosopher, and the vengeance of Zeus as the ven­ geance of a rival” (p. 16). It is an intriguing idea, one that promises a racy book that puts a new spin on the history of technology. Yet The Prometheus Complex is not as steamy as the introduction teases us into expecting, for what emerges is a wide-ranging compendium of historical ephemera 236 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE about technology’s history, from menstrual taboos to genetic engi­ neering. Hints at an overarching argument occasionally peek through, but they point less toward Bachelard’s burning ecstatic rev­ elry and more toward George Frankl’s Oedipus complex oftechnical posturing: we always want to outdo our fathers and their toys to in­ vent more tools of domination than the past generation could ever dream of. It seems a rather masculine view, but that may be van de Braak’s point about the posture of technical progress. These are interesting psychological observations, and it puts an interesting mental spin on the effect of technological omnipresence on our mind’s functioning. But van de Braak is a sociologist, and on the first page he announces his frustration with his own held in his attempt to solve the puzzle of technology’s effect on humanity. He is racing all over the map here, testing out other disciplines, grabbing fragments from here and there. Interesting fragments: we learn that Eisenhower invented the demonized term “military-indus­ trial complex.” The Swazi people in southern Africa started mining 28,000 years ago. Hunting behavior is unknown among nonhuman primates. These are fascinating tidbits, but the book does not hold together as it could. The language roams tentatively across the ques­ tions concerning technology like someone trying to prove a theory they’re not quite sure of. Likewise, the language itselfdoes not quite make sense: The hammer that nails someone to the cross is a weapon, but the hammer that makes the cross is a tool. For us, the ax that cuts down a tree is not a weapon that kills. We have learnt that certain instruments, even..." @default.
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• W4366809507 title "The Prometheus Complex: Man’s Obsession with Superior Technology by Hans van de Braak" @default.
• W4366809507 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.1997.0147" @default.
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