Reviews
The author examines the barriers that customers have faced in adopting personal technologies, including product unfamiliarity, nonintuitive instructions, lack of service or support, unavailability of replacement parts, and technological and planned obsolescence... A useful acquisition for consumer studies and history of technology collections.
An excellent introduction to the ways technology has been used in the domestic sphere.
A must read for historians of technology. Corn's thoughtful engagement of the historiography, inclusion of interdisciplinary scholarship, and close readings of the sources change what we know not simply about these individual machines, but about the process of technology consumption.
Joseph Corn's book is a much needed addition to the literature of the history of consumer technology.
A thoughtful, even profound meditation on the relationship of technology and culture.
Book Details
Introduction: Our Marvelous and Maddening Machines
1. The Advent of Technology Consumption
2. Buying an Automobile
3. Running a Car
4. Tools, Tinkering, and Trouble
5. Reading the Owner's Manual
6
Introduction: Our Marvelous and Maddening Machines
1. The Advent of Technology Consumption
2. Buying an Automobile
3. Running a Car
4. Tools, Tinkering, and Trouble
5. Reading the Owner's Manual
6. Computers and the Tyranny of Technology Consumption
Epilogue: The Technology Treadmill
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index