David Edgerton Libri

Out of a liberal, capitalist, genuinely global power of a unique kind, there arose from the 1940s a distinct British nation. This nation was committed to internal change, making it much more like the great continental powers. From the 1970s it became bound up both with the European Union and with foreign capital in new ways. David Edgerton's fascinating perspective produces refreshed understanding of everything from the nature of British politics to the performance of British industry. Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation gives us a grown-up, unsentimental history, one which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future.

'It's rare for a book to make you see the world differently, but this ... does exactly that on almost every page' GuardianStandard 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. I 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, and bookshops thrive despite Amazon. More horses were used in the Second World War than any other war in history and propeller planes continue to take off from the same runways as jets. 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.

從全球史來看，只有老科技才能真正觸及全球視野，不然若只談創新和發明，那麼就只能侷限在特定的城市或國家。從科技史的角度來看，衡量科技最重要的不是多新穎，而是如何被使用，科技的發展並不是新取代舊的進步史，老科技的影響力，比我們知道的要精彩許多。 這是部二十世紀的全球科技史，但卻是一部不尋常的科技史。 大多數科技史的寫法，通常把焦點放在重要的發明與創新，乃至以此作為敘事的架構。然而，這本書並未特別提到盤尼西林發現的日期或電腦是誰發明的，書末也沒有附上「二十世紀重大科技發明時間年表」。書中並未詳述萊特兄弟如何研發與試飛歷史上第一架動力飛機，倒是在插圖中提到，萊特經營的腳踏車店是當時相當典型的小型作坊（workshop）。 書中不談超音速噴射機、衛星發射或登月計劃等二十世紀著名的科技里程碑，卻用相當的篇幅談鐵皮屋、拼裝船和拼裝車、肥料農藥、屠宰場等一般科技史根本不會觸及的主題。 此外，作者還告訴我們，致力研發與使用新進武器科技的國家，不見得會贏得戰爭；二次世界大戰火炮與步槍所殺死的人數，要遠大於轟炸機與原子彈；一個國家投入科技研發的經費多少，與其經濟成長率不見得有正相關；擁有昂貴精密的高科技武器系統，不見得能戰勝科技水準落後的敵人。這樣的情況牴觸了許多人對科技的認知與常識，但歷史充斥著這樣的例子，統計數字也顯示如此，究竟這是怎麼回事？ 會對人類社會產生重大影響的科技，必然是使用相當廣泛的科技；一項科技要能獲得相當廣泛的使用，距離其發明必然已經有相當長一段時間；然而，大多數的科技史研究乃至通俗文化都把焦點放在發明、創新以及新科技早期的應用，這使得我們對於科技與社會的關係以及科技在歷史上如何發揮作用，理解有所偏差。 自第二次世界大戰以來，在英語世界裡科技幾乎等同於發明。這種混淆對於理解科技沒有幫助，也對理解發明造成負面影響。我們並沒有關於發明的歷史，相對地，我們擁有的是某些後來成功的科技之發明史，這點就使得理解有了偏差。然而，我們所擁有的發明史本身就是以創新為中心，它把焦點放在發明本身的某些新面向，強調發明本身出現的變化，而不是那些不變的部分。