Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity (52 page)

54.
Phil Patton, “Hard Hats,”
I.D
., vol. 41, no. 3 (May—June 1994), 62–67.

55.
Julian F. Barnes, “A Bicycling Mystery: Head Injuries Piling Up,”
New York Times
, July 29, 2001; Gary D. Mower, “Bicycle-Helmet Article Misled,”
Deseret News
(Salt Lake City), August 6, 2001.

56.
Douglass Carnall, “Cycle Helmets Should Not Be Compulsory,”
British Medical Journal
, vol. 318 (June 5, 1999), 2005; Mayer Hillman,
Cycle Helmets: The Case For and Against
(London: Policy Studies Institute, 1993); Gerald J. S. Wilde,
Ta r get Risk
(Toronto: PDE Publications,
1994).

57.
Gregory Bayan, “Reflections on a Hockey Helmet,”
Newsweek
, March 12, 1984, 13.

58.
Judith VandeWater, “Babies Can Get a Better Head Start When Helmets Round Out Flat Spots,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, March 28, 2002; Geoffrey A. Fowler, “Baby May Have a Flat Head, but Parents Shouldn’t Get Bent Out of Shape,”
U.S. News & World Report
, August 28, 2000, 57.

1.
Donna Haraway,
“A Cyborg Manifesto,” in
Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
(New York: Routledge, 1991), 149–81; Chris Hables Gray,
Cyborg Citizen
(New York: Routledge, 2001).

2.
Reidar F. Sognnaes, “America’s Most Famous Teeth,”
Smithsonian
, vol. 2, no. 11 (February 1973), 47–51; Robert Cohen and J. Scott Orr, “Often the Patient Is the Last to Know,”
Newark Star-Ledger
, August 11, 2002; Dean
E. Murphy, “Betraying John Hancock,”
New York Times
, February 4, 2001.

3.
Justin Bachman, “Boy’s Attached Fin Roils the Waters,”
Newark Star-Ledger
, August 16, 2002; Clare Wilson, “Cutting Edge,”
New Scientist
, vol. 175, no. 2355 (August 10, 2002), 32–35.

4.
Steve Mann with Hal Niedzviecki,
Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer
(Toronto: Doubleday
Canada, 2001), 4–5, 149–54.

5.
Phil Patton, “New Mouse Takes Shoulder off the Wheel,”
New York Times
, April 12, 2001; Ann Carrns, “Hard Hit by Imports, American Pencil Icon Tries to Get a Grip,”
Wall Street Journal
, November 24, 2000.

6.
Tactical Display for Soldiers
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1997); Geoffrey A. Fowler, “In the Digital Age, ‘All Thumbs’ Is Term of Highest Praise,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 17, 2002; Libby Copeland, “Thumbs Up: After Eons Spent in Its Siblings’ Shadow, the Dumpy Digit Finally Counts,”
Washington Post
, June 24, 2002; Frank Wilson,
The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), 146.

7.
Eric von Hippel,
The Sources of Innovation
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 1–25, 102–16;
Kim J. Vicente,
Cognitive Work Analysis: Towards Safe, Productive, and Healthy Computer-Based Work
(Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum), 109–38.

8.
John Markoff, “Kristen Nygaard, 75, Who Built Framework for Modern Computer Languages,”
New York Times
, August 14, 2001.

Suggestions for Further Reading

On human culture in comparative perspective, the best survey that I have found is Tim Ingold, ed.,
Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology
(London: Routledge, 1994), with a number of important articles by leading figures on themes such as tools and tool behavior, technology, and artifacts. For biologists’ views of the human/nonhuman divide, if there is one, see
W C. McGrew,
Chimpanzee Material Culture: Implications for Human Evolution
(Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Donald R. Griffin,
Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), and Frans de Waal,
The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist
(New York: Basic Books, 2001).

Frank R. Wilson’s
The Hand: How Its
Use Changes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1998) is a brilliant look at the relationship between human mental and physical skills. John Napier’s
Hands
, revised by Russell H. Tuttle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), remains a classic of biology and culture. Marcel Mauss’s short essays on body techniques in his
Sociology and Psychology: Essays
, trans.
Ben Brewster (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979) are indispensable. William H. McNeill’s
Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995) is a pioneering study of body techniques in history.

Jacques Ellul’s
The Technological Society
, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), was one of the twentieth century’s truly
prophetic works. As a study of the mechanical and the organic, Siegfried Giedion’s
Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History
(New York: Norton, 1969) is also a masterpiece. Excellent recent studies of the body and technology are Anson Rabinbach’s
The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity
(New York: Basic Books, 1990) and the papers, including a reprint
of Mauss’s essay on body techniques, collected in Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter, eds.,
Zone 6
(New York: Zone, 1992).

On material culture and history, one of the most delightful books remains Asa Briggs,
Victorian Things
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), a social historian’s survey of the nineteenth-century proliferation of Stuff. Its counterpart from an engineer’s perspective,
and even more absorbing, is Henry Petroski’s
The Evolution of Useful Things
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995). George Basalla,
The Evolution of Technology
(Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Wiebe E. Bijker,
Of Bicycles, Bakelite, and Bulbs
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995) mix theory and example agreeably. Bruno Jacomy’s
L’Âge du Plip: Chroniques de l’Innovation Technique
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2002) examines human-machine interaction from
a French perspective that should become more familiar in Anglo-American history of technology.

On breast-feeding and the bottle, the best academic survey is Patricia Stuart-Macadam and Katherine A. Dettwyler, eds.,
Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives
(New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995).

Much of the history of footwear
is preserved in trade publications, catalogues, and specialized textbooks. There is no book on zori in any Western language, but a wonderful cultural background exists in Susan B. Hanley’s
Everyday Things in Premodern Japan: The Hidden Legacy of Material Culture
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), which also is relevant to Japan’s retention of mat-level sitting and living. Most writing
about athletic shoes deals more with marketing strategy than with technical design. An enjoyable exception is Tom Vanderbilt’s
The Sneaker Book: Anatomy of an Industry and an Icon
(New York: New Press, 1998).

Of hundreds of studies of seating, Galen Cranz’s
The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design
(New York: Norton, 1998) stands out as a historical critique of conventional design. Katherine
C. Grier’s
Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850–1930
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), Kenneth L. Ames,
Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), and Leora Auslander,
Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) are equally readable
social histories of furniture. Clive D. Edwards,
Victorian Furniture: Technology and Design
(Manchester, Eng.: Manchester University Press, 1993) links industry and form.

A superb study of piano making is Edwin L. Good,
Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos: A Technological History from Cristofori to the Modern Concert Grand
, 2nd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). The best multiauthor
survey of piano history is James Parakilas, ed.,
Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). Beside the breezy but learned
Men, Women, and Pianos
by Arthur Loesser (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954) is Craig H. Roell’s more focused
The Piano in America, 1890–1940
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).

August Dvorak et al.,
Typewriting Behavior: Psychology Applied to Teaching and Learning Typewriting
(New York: American Book Company, 1936) is about much more than keyboard arrangements. It is a window on the industrial psychology of the 1930s. (One revelation: since a learning curve charts the growth of performance over time, a steep learning curve represents rapid rather than slow mastery.) In contemporary media studies,
Friedrich A. Kittler’s
Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz, and Lisa Gitelman,
Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era
(both Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999) stand out.

Among contemporary books on eyeglasses, the best historical survey is Joseph L. Bruneni’s
Looking Back: An Illustrated History of the
American Ophthalmic Industry
(Torrance, Cal.: Optical Laboratories Association, 1994). The best European-oriented reference is Richard Corson,
Fashions in Eyeglasses
(Chester Springs, Pa.: Dufour Editions, 1967). Both are unfortunately hard to find.

On ancient helmets the most accessible book is probably A. M. Snodgrass,
Arms and Armour of the Greeks
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967).
Bashford Dean’s
Helmets and Body Armor in Modern Warfare
, originally published by Yale University Press in 1920, was reprinted with an appendix on World War II armor in 1977
(Tuckahoe, N.Y.: C. J. Pugliese). It remains the best all-around survey. On the German steel helmet, Ludwig Baer’s
The History of the German Steel Helmet, 1916–1945
, trans. K. Daniel Dahl (San Jose, Calif.: R. J. Bender, 1985)
is based on original documents.

Donald A. Norman’s
The Psychology of Everyday Things
(New York: Basic Books, 1988), now reprinted as
The Design of Everyday Things
, emphasizes the mental side of physical objects. The most important recent study of the body in today’s workplace is Shoshana Zuboff,
In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power
(New York: Basic Books, 1988). For the
history of the visionary side of technology, mind, and body, there is Thierry Bardini’s
Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).

In cyborg anthropology, the starting point is Donna Haraway,
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
(New York: Routledge, 1991). Taking the theme into the Web era
are Chris Hables Gray,
Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age
(New York: Routledge, 2001), and N. Katherine Hailes,
How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

Finally, for two complementary views of the human future, I suggest Christopher Wills,
Children of Prometheus: The Accelerating Pace of Human
Evolution
(Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1998), and Rodney R. Brooks,
Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us
(New York: Pantheon Books, 2002).

Copyright © 2003 by Edward Tenner

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Tenner, Edward.
Our own devices : the past and future of body technology /
by Edward Tenner.
p. cm.

1. Technology—Social
aspects. 2. Technological innovations—Social aspects.
3. Human beings—Effect of technological innovations on.
4. Body, Human—Social aspects. 5. Body, Human (Philosophy) I. Title.
T14.5.T4588 2003
303.48′3—dc21
2002040694

eISBN: 978-0-307-48922-7

Author photograph © Jerry Bauer

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