Men, Machines, and Modern Times

A series of nineteenth-century episodes lets Elting E. Morison examine the nature of technological change, the rifts it opens in society and how society responds. He begins with resistance in the U.S. Navy after an officer found a way to aim naval guns more accurately at sea, then recounts the odd story of the Wapanoag, a new model of steamship, in the 1860s. Further chapters cover the difficulties of introducing the pasteurization of milk, how the Bessemer process developed and, last of all, the computer. Morison ties these anecdotes to a larger problem, how to organize systems of ideas, energy and machinery so that they fit the human dimension; his deeper aim is a hopeful alternative to Orwell's 1984.

Patrick Collison includes it on his Bookshelf list of books.