Subject: Technology & Engineering / History

Subject: Technology & Engineering / History

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The Danube Empire

|9780822967798|An Environmental History of Habsburg State Building and Civic Engagement|In the nineteenth century, changes to the environment, driven by ideology, natural forces, and burgeoning fossil fuel power, shifted the course of the Habsburg Empire. Along the Danube—Europe’s second longest river—hydraulic engineering projects ranging from bridges to embankments and shipping hubs affected the river’s dynamics, as did new activities related to trade, industrialization, sanitation, recreation, and agriculture. Taking a unique environmental perspective to explore questions of transnational solidarity and identity, The Danube Empire argues that the Danube River served as both a catalyst and a tool for institution building. Drawing on…

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The Danube Empire

|9780822948742|An Environmental History of Habsburg State Building and Civic Engagement|In the nineteenth century, changes to the environment, driven by ideology, natural forces, and burgeoning fossil fuel power, shifted the course of the Habsburg Empire. Along the Danube—Europe’s second longest river—hydraulic engineering projects ranging from bridges to embankments and shipping hubs affected the river’s dynamics, as did new activities related to trade, industrialization, sanitation, recreation, and agriculture. Taking a unique environmental perspective to explore questions of transnational solidarity and identity, The Danube Empire argues that the Danube River served as both a catalyst and a tool for institution building. Drawing on…

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The Descent of Artificial Intelligence

|9780822947967|A Deep History of an Idea Four Hundred Years in the Making|The idea that a new technology could challenge human intelligence is as old as the warning from Socrates and Plato that written language eroded memory. With the emergence of generative artificial intelligence programs, we find ourselves once again debating how a new technology might influence human thought and behavior. Researchers, software developers, and “visionary” tech writers even imagine an AI that will equal or surpass human intelligence, adding to a sense of technological determinism where humanity is inexorably shaped by powerful new machines. But among the hundreds of essays,…

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Technocratic Visions

|9780822947486|Engineers, Technology, and Society in Mexico|Technocratic Visions examines the context and societal consequences of technologies, technocratic governance, and development in Mexico, home of the first professional engineering school in the Americas. Contributors focus on the influential role of engineers, especially civil engineers, but also mining engineers, military engineers, architects, and other infrastructural and mechanical technicians. During the mid-nineteenth century, a period of immense upheaval and change domestically and globally, troubled governments attempted to expand and modernize Mexico’s engineering programs while resisting foreign invasion and adapting new Western technologies to existing precolonial and colonial foundations. The Mexican Revolution in 1910 greatly…

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Effluent America

|9780822957669|Cities, Industry, Energy, and the Environment|Garbage, wastewater, hazardous waste: these are the lenses through which Melosi views nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. In broad overviews and specific case studies, Melosi treats the relationship between industrial expansion and urban growth from an ecological perspective.| Martin V. Melosi| History of the Urban Environment| Technology & Engineering / History

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