R. A. Buchanan (1930–2020)

A quite enjoyable read but more as a curio than anything else, partly as it's designed as an introductory text for students, which I am not, and partly as it was written in 1990/91 and so pre-dates so much of the newer technology we enjoy. In fact in some ways its value comes in helping realise what has been achieved since the book was written.

For the scholarly reader, there's little here that you'll not already know unless new to history and the history of what Norman Davies calls "The Isles" to avoid definitional traps!

However if you've never really thought much about how technology has developed, the structures of development and how technology has shaped everything in our lives, then there's a fair bit of value in here for the thinking it encourages.… (meer)