Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Technology & Engineering Social Aspects

Technology and Society

A Canadian Perspective, Second Edition

by (author) John Goyder

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Dec 2004
Category
Social Aspects, General, Military Science
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781551115535
    Publish Date
    Dec 2004
    List Price
    $34.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442603011
    Publish Date
    Apr 2013
    List Price
    $28.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781551110486
    Publish Date
    Jun 1997
    List Price
    $29.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

Since the publication of the first edition of Technology and Society: A Canadian Perspective in 1997, awareness of the pervasive effects of new and emerging technologies on our lives is, if anything, even more pronounced. New and emerging technologies in everything from health care to communication and the Internet hold enormous promise. However, the more ominous consequences of technology are also very much with us, from environmental degradation to uncertainty in the workplace in a post "dot.com" economy to terrorism and warfare.

Technology and Society, Second Edition, continues the rich tradition of Canadian writing on technology found in the work of Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, George Grant, Ursula Franklin, and others. Like the first edition, the book begins and ends with an attempt to understand Grant's insistence that technology is a "fate," connected, in the anthropological sense, with the evolution of societies. In between, the book examines the social and historical foundation for the development and diffusion of technology in the Canadian context. The first three chapters define the phenomenon of technology by classifying the vast array of tools and techniques. They offer a conceptual scheme for understanding the interrelationship between society and technology and for the diffusion of technologies. Subsequent chapters shift to looking at the consequences of technology. The linkage between technology and economic development is explored, as is the significance of a technocratic value system. The relationship between work and technology—the significance of "automation," of a "branch plant" economy, "R&D," and communication—is examined. The final chapters consider new leading technologies such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology, as well as public attitudes towards technology.

About the author

John Goyder, a professor of sociology at the ;University of Waterloo, is the author of Essentials of Canadian Society (1990) and The Silent Minority (1987). He collaborated with John Porter, Frank Jones, Peter Pineo, Monica Boyd, and Hugh McRoberts on the National Mobility study, reported in the 1985 book, Ascription and Achievement.

John Goyder's profile page