Unbound: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human and Brought Our World to the Brink - Couverture souple

Currier, Richard L.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1628727527 ISBN 13 : 9781628727524

Editeur : Arcade, 2017

Synopsis

*A Wall Street Journal Bestseller*

Like Guns, Germs, and Steel, a work of breathtaking sweep and originality that reinterprets the human story.

Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.

The fabrication of weapons, the mastery of fire, and the technologies of clothing and shelter radically restructured the human body, enabling us to walk upright, shed our body hair, and migrate out of tropical Africa. Symbolic communication transformed human evolution from a slow biological process into a fast cultural process. The invention of agriculture revolutionized the relationship between humanity and the environment, and the technologies of interaction led to the birth of civilization. Precision machinery spawned the industrial revolution and the rise of nation-states; and in the next metamorphosis, digital technologies may well unite all of humanity for the benefit of future generations.

Synthesizing the findings of primatology, paleontology, archeology, history, and anthropology, Richard Currier reinterprets and retells the modern narrative of human evolution that began with the discovery of Lucy and other Australopithecus fossils. But the same forces that allowed us to integrate technology into every aspect of our daily lives have also brought us to the brink of planetary catastrophe. Unbound explains both how we got here and how human society must be transformed again to achieve a sustainable future.

Technology: “The deliberate modification of any natural object or substance with forethought to achieve a specific end or to serve a specific purpose.”

A propos du livre

À propos des auteurs

Richard L. Currier earned his BA and PhD in social and cultural anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and taught anthropology at Berkeley, the University of Minnesota, and the State University of New York. He coauthored a ten-volume series on archaeology for young adults and published numerous articles in scholarly journals and mainstream magazines. A pioneer in the design and development of interactive learning technologies, Currier has won numerous awards for his work. He lives in Oceanside, California.

Tom Gjelten is Religion and Belief Correspondent at NPR News. His reporting draws on his experience covering national and international news from posts in Washington and around the world. His new book, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story, recounts the impact on America of the 1965 Immigration Act, which opened the country to non-European immigrants.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Arcade
• Date d'édition: 2017
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1628727527
• ISBN 13: 9781628727524
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 424
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Pays-Bas