Book Description
Smart Mobs takes us on a journey around the world for a preview of the next techno-cultural shift. The coming wave, says Rheingold, is the result of super-efficient mobile communications-cellular phones, wireless-paging, and Internet-access devices-that will allow us to connect with anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Rheingold offers a penetrating perspective on the new convergence of pop culture, cutting-edge technology, and social activism. He also reminds us that the real impact of mobile communications will come not from the technology itself but from how people use it, resist it, and adapt to it.
Customer Reviews:
incohesive writing.......2006-01-20
This book suffers from incohesive writing and lacks a clear framework that covers the theme of smart mobs. The sequence of chapters does not provide a progressive build-up of a framework of any sort. Even more, the sequence inside each chapter does not carry the reader towards any defined theme. On one section the author describes teenagers in Finland sending text messages, then he jumps to his meeting with a company executive, then jumps to describing the mobile phone standards in Europe, etc.
The only common thread among sections in chapters and among the chapters is the smart mobs theme, obviously, but the author does not break down clearly this central theme into its parts. This makes for a very confusing and bothersome reading.
A whirlwind tour through the world next year........2005-10-09
Howard Rheingold has excellent credentials to write this book through his long involvement at Wired magazine. He blends an effervescent interest in smart new gadgetry (point your phone-cam at some foreign signwriting and have it translated into your own language) with a thirsty desire to understand what it means to our society. To hunt down the story he structures the narrative in a breathtaking first-person style that takes us from Shibuya Station in Tokyo to the wireless capital of the world, Helsinki, and then back across the Atlantic to Bell Laboratories - and beyond.
Clearly our society has been undergoing massive underlying change since the advent of the internet and mobile phones - but few writers have really grappled with the wider implications. If, as McLuhan said, the Medium is the Message then wireless technology provides a medium that totally re-engineers the way people can interact with their physical and social environment.
Rheingold calls on dramatic examples of how individuals, wireless and mobile, can outwit the top down forces of the establishment - for example in the World Trade protests at Seattle, and political protests in the Philippines. He uses these as a metaphor for how the top-down 20th Century style organisations, political, industrial or media are increasingly out of step in the mobile age. Rheingold looks to young urban people - urban tribes if you like - as a bellwether to tomorrow's society.
I loved this book. The writing is sharp, the insights deep and Rheingold's ability to take us into the labs of tomorrow a real treat. I strongly recommend it.
Smart Mobs. Smarter Marketers........2004-09-08
The cool thing about "Smart Mobs" is that it's really happening. People are behaving in "linked" ways that transcend the obvious demographic definitions of groups we typically think of as "behaving in unison." As technology and the infrastructure arriving with it enable increasingly extemporaneous networks between people, marketers are similarly challenged to reach outside of traditional mass channels. Howard Rheingold brings us a really nice set of actual examples--combined with his own unique insights--that provide the basis for next-generation communications strategies as what had been cohesive groups fragment into a foam of indivduals united (only) by this moments current interest and the task at hand. For marketers, it's a great read...and a big clue. Anyway, I liked it.
Remote Control To The World.......2004-04-08
How many of you recall that EF Hutton commercial that started off by saying, "When EF Hutton talks, people listen". The same thought can be applied to Howard Rheingold.
Rheingold is veteran technology watcher and well-publised futurist. He has identified yet another transformative technology. In 'Smart Mobs' he describes in vivid detail how large, geographically dispersed groups connected only by thin threads of communications techology, such as text messaging, e-mail, cell phones, two-way pagers, and web sites, can draw together in the blink of an eye, groups of people together for a collective cause.
From various parts of the world, Rheingold, has gathered stories about engineers and inventors of all sorts, working feverishly to create ever-smaller and more powerful devices that contribute to this new paradigm.
In this book,Rheingold points out examples of Smart Mobs such as the swarms of demonstrators who used mobile phones, Web sites, laptops and handheld computers to coordinate their protests against the World Trade Organization in November of 1999.
Rheingold shows a concern of smart mobs other than describing the weath of new communications technology that is available and coming. He is also concerned about the social, political, economic, environmental and even genetic consequences of the ever-expanding and more intrusive plethora of multidirectional communications technology.
This book is a must read.
Keen on Smart Mobs.......2004-04-07
As one who needed a basic primer on various areas of technology--past, present, and future--and their implications for the human being, I found "Smart Mobs" to be both helpful and conversational. Rheingold's journalistic style kept the topics easy to understand, interesting to read, and fairly light hearted in spite of some rather daunting conclusions that one could draw from his research. As well, those who want to delve further into the various topics discussed will find his endnotes quite helpful--annotated are works from a number of key figures who a) are making, or have made, breakthroughs in technology, or b) provided insightful critiques on those breakthroughs. I found that engaging in "Smart Mobs" opened the door to further research and understanding of this seemingly complex and very progressive area of study.
Book Description
Originally published in 1964, One-Dimensional Man quickly became one of the most important texts in the ensuing decade of radical political change. This second edition, newly introduced by Marcuse scholar Douglas Kellner, presents Marcuse's best-selling work to another generation of readers in the context of contemporary events. "Marcuse shows himself to be one of the most radical and forceful thinkers of this time." -The Nation
Customer Reviews:
Very exciting........2007-07-26
Not disillusioned with the central theme of Marxism, Marcuse attempts to explain the arrested development of post-Marxist revolution, along with totalitarianism of both capitalist and communist systems, production for the sake of production, the sciences infiltrated by totalitarian ideology which leads to catastrophic consequences, the dialectic which portrays man's potential and man's defeat in the face of modern society and the systematic adjustment and tolerance to rebellion against existing society, like Che Guevara designer t-shirts.
Trenchant social critique.......2006-11-03
I first read this in college, and it is still one of my favorite books, full of perceptive, although not positive insights into western society
A surprisingly disappointing book.......2006-04-08
This is Marcuse's most famous work and one that was a major influence on and during the student revolts all over the European continent of 1968. Many of the catchphrases of that time, such as "repressive tolerance" and the like, are derived directly from Marcuse. He has since lost much of his popularity and audience, and in my view, quite deservedly so.
His main thesis is that modern man has become one-dimensional due to the totalitarian, all-encompassing exercise of power by the entrenched capitalist class. While this of itself is not such a bad idea, though certainly romanticizing and exaggerating reality, his approach to explaining and attacking it leaves very much to be desired. Marcuse overuses empty or unexplained phrases endlessly (like "cutting off perspectives through an overwhelming ossified concreteness of imagery" and similar things) while at the same time hardly making use of any prior thought or philosophy on the subject at all. This makes the impression of much ranting and little content. Even worse is his general laziness as a thinker - he never actually bothers to explain why such a full-spectrum dominance has occurred or how he wants to prove its existence, he merely asserts it and then goes on about the manifold bad effects it has.
Rather bizarre in this context, and perhaps even nihilistic, is his general dislike of what he perceives as "rationality". He only uses this word in negative contexts (particularly in the context of industrial expansion) and seems to consider it the primary form of "one-dimensional thinking", affected by the symbolism of capitalism. Now it is one thing to say that the fashionable concept of rationalism is false and ill-founded, but to reject relying on rational processes altogether as he seems to do is a bit too much.
To put it bluntly, everything Marcuse has written in this book has also been written in, say, Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle", and then in half as many words and quite more philosophically coherent. The early Marcuse (of Eros and Civilization) was much better; this book warrants no more interest than a purely antiquarian historical one.
Lacking any kind of perspective........2006-03-01
The idea that modern life is administered and that we could only begin to be happy if the government provided us with food, clothing and shelter is foolish naivety. In his pampered life of academia his absurd ramblings missed the mark in enumerable ways. Marcuse has a total lack of historical or psychological perspective - he understands nothing about mankind. The middle ages was far more administered than the late twentieth century. We currently have access to any and all information but in the Middle Ages the only input for the average person was the from the church.
His idea that life would be much improved if men did not have to prove themselves in the marketplace is really intellectual absurdity to the Nth degree. While he sucked his living off the very people that had proved themselves in the market place - he wrote this trash.
When We Dead Awake.......2005-06-09
By pure chance I found an old, tattered copy of this in a used book shop many years ago. I still recall the bizarre sensation of realizing that someone else, much older than me and way ahead of my own experiences, had expressed so accurately, so vividly, a view of society that I understood, and suspect is resonant among many, but perplexing to articulate in a way that isn't flippantly dismissed outright by those who gauge the intrinsic worth of human existence by a poisoned belief structure's merits.
Marcuse's book is a damning examination of the dynamics of 'democratic unfreedom;' technological servitude in the guise of liberty. I remember how the notion struck me, that if such societal/institutional analysis was on target in the early 1960s, just how indoctrinated and delusional must the situation be in our currently perceived time? Precisely.
Thankfully there are a few truly aware pockets of critical thought to be found, but by and large, the Few Big easily control the UNcritical masses through a constant barrage of institutional, cultural and media propaganda(entertainment equals indoctrination)and the strategically manufactured 'values' and exhaulted social practices of this UNreality are then impressed upon one person to the other as the herd 'polices' and indoctrinates via familiarity, example and ostrcism, making opposition to greed and superficiality appear absurd, futile.
Marcuse discusses artistic alienation, how the inherent properties of truth and protest found in artistic expression were defanged:
"The absorbent power of society depletes the artistic dimension by assimilating its antagonistic contents. In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference. Prior to the advent of this cultural reconciliation, literature and art were essentially alienation, sustaining and protecting the contradiction-the unhappy consciousness of the divided world, the defeated possibilities, the hopes unfulfilled, and the promises betrayed. They were a rational, cognitive force, revealing a dimension of man and nature which was repressed and repelled in reality. Their truth was in the illusion evoked, in the insistence on creating a world in which the terror of life was called up and suspended-mastered by recognition. This is the miracle of the chefd'oeuvre; it is the tragedy, sustained to the last, and the end of tragedy-its impossible solution. To live one's love and hatred, to live that which one *is* means defeat, resignation, and death. The crimes of society, the hell that man has made for man become the actual unconquerable cosmic forces."
It's fascinating when observing various societal/cultural trends, tendencies and practices, to go back and see how it corresponds with Marcuse's prophetic warning...and yes, that is meant quite literally: this book is no less prophetic than Orwell's 1984, and what's more, is far more chilling in its range and scope due to it's realistic exploration of cultural indoctrination, mass delusion and mass denial. In Orwell's novel, 1984, Winston Smith's world is controlled through ideology, yes, but the Big Stick of state violence looms above perpetually, ensuring the perpetuation of an automatized populace.
Marcuse's book, on the other hand, is an irrefutable postulation of the Big Lie, the comfortably horrific ease in which society has become fatally entangled within a stupor of brainwashed self deception, welcomed, enthusiastic exploitation, zombie consumerism run amok, repression and lunatic militarism.
He uses words in a manner of stark clarification, refusing to allow modern society to slip the proverbial noose, and find comfortable, convenient excuses, denials and justifications. As the "Newsweek" review quoted on the cover appropriately exclaims: "A bitter cry of social protest, fortified by uncommon erudition and rationality."
What honest chance for our civilization, for our species, remains in such endless cycles of lunacy? Your hair would stand on end if you knew how many times we've come seconds close to accidental nuclear holocaust. That is reality, and to passively ignore it is to do so at our own peril. I wonder just how few people can actually comprehend that?...what is says about us.
The corporations and the 'Few Big' dominate the globe, and next they want the full militaristic dominance of outer space with their astonishingly psychotic "Star Wars" missle defense plan, which naturally has NOTHING to do with defense and everything to do with parting ways with long standing non proliferation treaties, and of course, global domination. Billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars are pathologically spent on nuclear weapons every year...gee, with the Soviet Union gone, who or what do ya s'pose they're gearing up for when they've already amassed enough weapons to implement race suicide a hundred times over?
This is the crucial point Marcuse is making: the populace is strategically marginalized into apathy and indifference, out and away from the concerns of policy making decisions by vested interests who strive to make huge profits by 'dumbing down' standards of humanity, tricking the public into subsidizing high end military technology, and appealing to base attractions and distractions(greed, superficiality, apathy)in order to secure the compliance of a mass of stunningly indifferent, dumb people who are actively participating in their own degredation and ultimate demise, if only by their inability and/or unwillingness to acknowledge what should be flagrantly obvious. We're all guilty of this to some degree. People tend to talk about what matters to them most...or, what they've been conditioned and programmed to care about most, right? So when you *don't* hear many around you discussing these common sense issues, life and death issues, think of the potential consequences for our species. Encourage those around you to read Marcuse's book, it outlines a lot of basic groundwork for what we, if we're to be honest, face today.
Amazon.com
In Medieval Technology and Social Change, Lynn White considers the effects of technological innovation on the societies of medieval Europe: the slow collapse of feudalism with the development of machines and tools that introduced factories in place of cottage industries, and the development of the manorial system with the introduction of new kinds of plows and new methods of crop rotation. One invention of particular import, writes White, was the stirrup, which in turn introduced heavy, long-range cavalry to the medieval battlefield. The development thus escalated small-scale conflict to "shock combat." Cannons and flamethrowers followed, as did more peaceful inventions, such as watermills and reapers.
Book Description
This study examines the role of technological innovation during the rise of social groups in the Middle Ages.
Customer Reviews:
The Great Stirrup Controversy.......2003-12-13
Halsall gets it wrong. The great controversy is still going on about feudalism as a system arising from a technological innovation, the stirrup.
White's details about the stirrup and change of warfare are partly insufficient and conclusions partly dubious. - But this is exactly, why we read history. The causes of events tend to be very complicated. Luckily there is Trivial Pursuit and other parlour games for people, who prefer "facts".
This book is seminal.
A great work that connects technological and social history.......2002-11-02
This is one of the classic works of medieval studies to emerge out of the past half century, and its importance far outstrips whether or not White's famous stirrup thesis is correct or not. The overwhelming consensus is that it is incorrect. But only someone who has not read the book could imagine that that thesis was the bulk of the book, or the only idea in it. In fact, there is an unstated, larger thesis that underlies White's book, and which indicates why it is important: White implies that we can only understand the medieval period if we also understand its technology. White virtually ushered in the age of the study of medieval technology and seeing it as intimately connected and underlying the social and even political history.
This is a short book, shorter than it initially seems upon holding it because of the vast number of foot and endnotes. But the number of ideas and insights are completely out of proportion with the book's apparent brevity. It is absolutely stuffed to overflowing with content. Miraculously, that doesn't effect its readability. Even a relative neophyte to historical studies will have little difficulty following White's ideas and arguments, although, obviously, the more one knows, the better the background one will have for understanding his theses.
Although his stirrup thesis has largely been rejected, this remains an essential book on any short list of the great works of medieval history. More than that, it is fun, too. I strongly recommend it to anyone with the slightest degree of interest in medieval history.
Old But Not Out of Date.......2002-10-14
Medieval Technology and Social Change was published in 1962. It is the production of a professor and it bears many of the characteristics of such works: huge numbers of footnotes, further Notes at the end (comprising about a third of the total book), and an extremely scholarly tone. Fortunately Professor White writes much better than many academics, and the book contains a number of interesting speculations about the effect of Europe of the technological changes which took place in the Middle Ages.
The book concentrates almost completely on Europe, so that you will have to look elsewhere for technological changes in the rest of the world, but what is here is fascinating. There is speculation on the role of the stirrup in revolutionizing warfare and feudalism, an examination of the effects of the three field system on the health of the medieval Europeans, and some intriquing hypotheses on the development of various power sources and machine designs. Worthwhile, particularly in combination with a broader work such as Technology in World Civilization by Arnold Pacey.
Relevant, not outdated.......2002-09-27
This book was part of the PhD curriculim at a top-tier university for Public Policy. The course was Science & Technology Policy I (a massive literature review before getting into our own research).
Whether or not the chain of events and relationships occurred precisely as White postulates is irrelevant.
The POINT is that small, technological change can have GIANT impacts upon life and social organization. This has been proven repeatedly by the researchers/students of complexity science (see Mitchell Waldrop, Murray Gell-Mann, Roger Lewin, John Holland, etc.)
By connecting medieval technological change (eg agrarian practices, stirrup, clock) to societal change (eg feudal system, settlement/town patterns), this book provides readers with a conceptual starting point to begin thinking about the impact of modern and future technologies.
In short, its a quick, VERY stimulating and interesting read. With the price at only 2 dollars, you can't go wrong!
Old and Out Dated.......2002-06-13
White's "stirrup" thesis was shown to be incorrect by Bernard Bachrach over 30 years ago. It was an interesting hypothesis at the time, but now has become one of those ideas (such as medieval people thinking the world was flat) that half-educated school teachers tell students and that even gets into the less well-edited textbooks.
In other words, read this book if you are interested in the history of ideas, but not for conclusions any professional medieval specialist would accept.
Book Description
Explores the role of firefighting in human history while chronicling the world's most famous fires. An innovative, vividly illustrated chronicle of humankind's struggle to subdue nature's most primal and destructive force -- from Rome in 64 AD to the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 -- Firefighting examines history's most formidable fires, showing how each influenced the evolution of firefighting technology, equipment, and tactics. Following today's firefighters as they prepare to meet the challenges of tomorrow's fires, no other book has explored the role of the firefighter in human society-past, present, and future quite like Firefighting.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting look at the history of fires.......2005-07-20
I bought this book for my brother (a volunteer firefighter) for Christmas and when I received it I could not help but take a peek at it myself.
The pictures and stories are amazing. I have not had a chance to read it completely, but I will take the time before giving the book away.
This book would be a great gift for any fire fighter or anyone interested in the history of some of the greatest fires in the world.
Over 500 photos capture key moments in fire history.......2003-04-12
Jack Gottschalk's Firefighting is a lavish coffee table title which provides a rich documentary of the history of firefighting, from early technological accomplishments which created fire-fighting equipment to modern times. Over 500 photos capture key moments in fire history around the world, while special insights on the science and physics of fires makes for an excellent survey of fire-fighting challenges.
65 of history's greatest fires.......2003-01-27
Or would that be "disasters!"
This book features an in-depth examination of 65 fires from all around the world and in a variety of categories.
Ship Fires
Explosions
Forest Fires
Fires in the Workplace
This book shows how each fire influenced the way in which fires are fought today. This book shows the latest high-tech firefighting gear and vehicles. Shows the evolution of firefighting technology, equipment, and tactics.
Features:
Over 500 photographs
Key moments like the Great Fire of London, in 1666
Shows the physics behind back drafts and flashovers
Illustrated history of fire equipment
Fire Trucks
Firefighter's gear
Contents:
Early Firefighting, Conflagrations, Theater Fires, Hotel Fires, Ship Fires, Earthquake and Fire, Wildfires, Fire in the Workplace, Nightclub Fires, Tent and Amusement Park Fires, Fire as a Weapon, Great Explosions, School Fires, Fires in Public Places, Subterranean Fuel Fires, In the Line of Duty.
Physics of Fire, Forensics, Safety Implementation, Clothing, Old Engines, Ladder Trucks, Rescue, Air & Sea, Outdoor Training Techniques, Indoor Training Techniques.
Everything from leather fire buckets to the World Trade Center tragedy on September 11, 2001 we still can't believe happened.
Part of the proceeds of this book will benefit the Widows' and Children's Fun, part of the Uniformed Firefighter's Association.
great book for kids.......2002-08-20
This is an excellent book for children to learn more about firefighting--both about the history and modern techniques and equipment. It's detailed without being overly graphic. And as with all DK books, it's chockful of beautiful photographs that clearly show what words cannot describe.
Of particular interest are the case studies of various famous fires (mostly in the U.S.) throughout history, their causes, the destruction wreaked, and effects on firefighting efforts. This is especially interesting in the context of the development of firefighting techniques as we get to see just how much has had to happen to get to where we are today--and in some cases, how much further we have to go.
Book Description
In the seventh century the kingdom of Samarkand sent formal gifts of fancy yellow peaches, large as goose eggs and with a color like gold, to the Chinese court at Ch'ang-an. What kind of fruit these golden peaches really were cannot now be guessed, but they have the glamour of mystery, and they symbolize all the exotic things longed for, and unknown things hoped for, by the people of the T'ang empire.
This book examines the exotics imported into China during the T'ang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907), and depicts their influence on Chinese life. Into the land during the three centuries of T'ang came the natives of almost every nation of Asia, all bringing exotic wares either as gifts or as goods to be sold. Ivory, rare woods, drugs, diamonds, magicians, dancing girls--the author covers all classes of unusual imports, their places of origin, their lore, their effort on costume, dwellings, diet, and on painting, sculpture, music, and poetry.
This book is not a statistical record of commercial imports and medieval trade, but rather a "humanistic essay, however material its subject matter."
Customer Reviews:
A great book--unless you need the reference section.......2007-07-25
When this book arrived yesturday I couldn't wait to dive into it. I'm doing a research project on medieval aviculture in China and had heard from a friend this book might have key information I was looking for. Sure enough, the information is golden. But the bibliography is NOT, so much that I have to downgrade from 5 stars to 3 stars. All over the notes section are abbreviations that you cannot readily find explained. Rather than just copying and pasting the names of the works, you get TTT and the like. hello, but what is that???
Bibliographies and notes have to be useful so that researchers like me can consult the same sources used in the work. This work is beautiful and reads well, but is terrible to check out. How can I check sources if there's no way to figure out what the sources used really are? How do I determine if there were rose breasted cockatoos in China if I cannot see the original for myself? Maybe this author doesn't know a cockatoo from a cockapoo! It's why I'm expected to check the bibliography and read the originals. So read the book but don't expect to get great research out of it.
Oh and one more thing: he doesn't use hanyu pinyin in this book. I don't know what romanization system he's using, but heck that I can figure out who, what, or where when it comes to Chinese language words and names! Again, this is important for a researcher!
Would it hurt to write "Beijing" instead of "Peking?"
A Scholarly Resource.......2007-04-18
The Golden Peaches of Samarkand has been very well-beloved by professional Sinologists ever since it first came out in 1963. Happily, it still remains available, 44 years later, in this paperback incarnation. The book features an obsessivly complete listing, with judicious commentary, of nearly every trade product that came into Tang China by sea or land. Equally helpful, are the end notes which reference each such product to the Chinese sources that mention it.
However, general readers will want to know that this is a very detailed reference book that is mostly of interest to professionals. Don't be misled by the glowing (and deservedly so) scholarly reviews! An example:
"PATCHOULI
A Malayan mist yields the fragrant black oil which was called malabathron or phyllon Indikon, "Indian leaf," in the classical West. Its Sanskrit name is tamala-pattra, but we know it by a name derived from Tamil, paccilai, "green leaf." In Chinese, patchouli was called "bean-leaf aromatic," from its appearance..."
If the idea of reading 300 pages like this turns you on, hey, go for it :-)
The Kunstkammer of the Tang Dynasty.......2006-09-24
I came by this book because of its tantalizing title: The Golden Peaches of Samarkand. Who can resist such a juicy exotic invitation? I couldn't, so I plunged into this intriguing essay on Tang exotics and I must say I emerged enriched.
Edward Schafer (1913-1991) was truly a great Chinese scholar because in an university scenario in which much had already been said on the Tang period and on the scientific and cultural life of Chine during the Early Middle Ages (that by the way for the Chinese represent what for Europe was the Renaissance if a similar comparison in proper) by major scholars such as Needham, he managed to create and original, interesting and nowadays indispensable reference book for that historical period. In a plethora of texts that all give a different view of the same topics endlessly repeating the known historical facts, this "microhistory" essay tangentially describes Tang civilization touching and exploring the lives and desires of rich men in another age.
The Tang Dynasty (618-907) ruled during a period in which China probably was the most advanced civilization of the world and as in all rich societies the search for the superfluous became a necessity. The development of commerce by land and see, the safety of the Silk Road to the West and the political necessity or at time the disinterested pleasure of foreign kings in sending gifts and tokens of gratitude to the Tang emperors all contributed to the afflux to Chang'an (the Tang capital of the times) of all the strangest, rarest and most expensive luxury goods. This stimulated the emperors' and the peoples curiosity giving way to more requests, descriptions in poetry, amazing tales, representations in art and downright falsifications of these exotic artefacts.
Kunstkammers have always been the expression of the culture and richness (remember Rudolph the II in Prague) and have represented a further stimulus to civilization. Reading this book we are amazed by the quantity and quality of foreign goods known by the Chinese. Schafer, with a beautiful prose, often interrupted by his own or A. Waverly's translation (translator of The Monkey) of Chinese poems by major Tang artists, leads us by categories to a deep knowledge of the period's reality and imagination. A apparently sterile catalogue of men, domestic and wild animals, birds, furs and feathers, plants, woods, foods, aromatics (spices), drugs, textiles, pigments, minerals, jewels, metals, secular and sacred objects and books in reality opens up like with a magical key an infinity of little rooms full of "mirabilia", each linked to stories, poems, sages and monks, pharmacists and alchemists, emperors and their wives and court men.
Other reviewers have suggested not to read the book cover to cover, but to skim through it following your curiosity. Actually I went through the book cover to cover, reading all the notes that represent more than one fifth of the text and I did not find it particularly heavy. Instead I was stimulated all along to consult other books for the illustrations, which unfortunately are missing for the major part. I received great help from the beautiful "Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting" by Yang Xin and others, and I also from the old book on "China, a History in Art" by Bradley Smith and Wan-go Wen. For the historical reference I used J.A.G. Robert's the "A Concise History of China" that helps to understand the economical and political situation.
Naturally, this book would be best read with a solid preparation in Chinese history but I think it is enjoyable even without it. Surely it awakes curiosity for further study of that magnificent historical period.
A golden nugget in Chinese historiography.
Brilliant Work by the Best T'ang Scholar Yet.......2005-08-02
This work is brilliant. That said, don't pick this up expecting to read cover to cover. View it more as a thematically-organized encyclopedia of T'ang exotics and you'll enjoy the experience much more. A must-read for any student of the T'ang period.
Golden Peach of Literary and historic value.......2003-02-27
... I haven't read any book like this for a long long time. The flowing texture of writing, the unique choice of organization, the depth of the author's knowledge in T'ang empire and its relation with city-states in Serindia as well as other peripheral states, the grasp of Chinese classical literary texts, of this book, clearly set a high standard that's hard to surpass.
This is not a chronicle of events between 7 and 10th century. There is no clear time axis to the theme. Yet it reveals to us a vivid, alternative facade of T'ang empire. It is not an overstatement to say, for me, it is rather shocking to find out that so many things that are considered quintessentially Chinese are actually product of people of many origins. For example, in Chapter II Men | Musicians and Dancers, the most celebrated Chinese classic "Rainbow Chemise, Feathered Dress" was actually a rendition of Serindian song "Brahman". (This song is now lost. Once rediscovered by a lyricst of Sung era, 2-3 centuries later. Lost again later on). This once again strengthen my view of Sinic culture as a fruition of multi-cultural interation.
I do wish author had put in the book a timetable of major political events. He had only one for dynasties timetable, and one succession table for T'ang Emporers. For example, when he repeatedly referred to the conquest by T'ang (Emporor Tai Chung) of Kogoryo, if he has a table for political events we wouldn't have to confer a history book to find it out what year that's and how that's related to other major events (such as Rebellion of Rokhsan).
Except this tiny blemish, I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in history as well as cultures.
To wrap up this petite review, I would like to put down a few footnotes to the book, for other intelligent readers:
1. The Grand Canal (referred to by the Author as "The River of Transport", a literal translation) was built in the reign of Emporer Young, Sui Dynasty which preceded T'ang.
This one thousands odd miles long acquaduct contribute greatly to the nation's unity, prosperity. Perhaps, for the first time, the economy of the south and the north are truely united.
2. In the book, Author translated Chinese old names for Rome as "the Great Chin". This is correct only in modern times if one is to interpret the word "Da Chin"(Rome) literally. According to some scholar, Da Chin came from the ancient word "Dasina" which means "the one from the west". The other proper name for Rome is "Fu Lin" which derived from "FRome", a phonetic variant of "Rome".
Enjoy the book
Book Description
"Once you get into the flow of things, you're always haunted by the way that things could have turned out. This outcome, that conclusion. You get my drift. The uncertainty is what holds the story together, and that's what I'm going to talk about."
--Rhythm Science
The conceptual artist Paul Miller, also known as Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid, delivers a manifesto for rhythm science -- the creation of art from the flow of patterns in sound and culture, "the changing same." Taking the Dj's mix as template, he describes how the artist, navigating the innumerable ways to arrange the mix of cultural ideas and objects that bombard us, uses technology and art to create something new and expressive and endlessly variable. Technology provides the method and model; information on the web, like the elements of a mix, doesn't stay in one place. And technology is the medium, bridging the artist's consciousness and the outside world.
Miller constructed his Dj Spooky persona ("spooky" from the eerie sounds of hip-hop, techno, ambient, and the other music that he plays) as a conceptual art project, but then came to see it as the opportunity for "coding a generative syntax for new languages of creativity." For example: "Start with the inspiration of George Herriman's Krazy Kat comic strip. Make a track invoking his absurd landscapes... What do tons and tons of air pressure moving in the atmosphere sound like? Make music that acts a metaphor for that kind of immersion or density." Or, for an online "remix" of two works by Marcel Duchamp: "I took a lot of his material written on music and flipped it into a DJ mix of his visual material -- with him rhyming!"
Tracing the genealogy of rhythm science, Miller cites sources and influences as varied as Ralph Waldo Emerson ("all minds quote"), Grandmaster Flash, W. E. B Dubois, James Joyce, and Eminem. "The story unfolds while the fragments coalesce," he writes.
Miller's textual provocations are designed for maximum visual and tactile seduction by the international studio COMA (Cornelia Blatter and Marcel Hermans). They sustain the book's motifs of recontextualizing and relayering, texts and images bleed through from page to page, creating what amount to 2.5 dimensional vectors. From its remarkable velvet flesh cover, to the die cut hole through the center of the book, which reveals the colored nub holding in place the included audio CD, Rhythm Science: Excerpts and Allegories from the Sub Rosa Archives, this pamphlet truly lives up to Editorial Director Peter Lunenfeld's claim that the Mediawork Pamphlets are "theoretical fetish objects . . . 'zines for grown-ups."
Customer Reviews:
Sampling the world.......2007-09-02
Rhythm Science di Paul D. Miller (The MIT Press, Mediaworks Pamphlet Series) non è un saggio sulla Dj-culture, ma più semplicemente una raccolta di appunti e di idee, talvolta anche autobiografiche, sul senso del fare musica, sulle origini del processo creativo contemporaneo, sulla filosofia e sui padri del campionamento.
L'autore, Paul D. Miller meglio conosciuto come Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid (Washington DC, 1970) artista concettuale, scrittore, filmaker e musicista, descrive il processo creativo del Dj moderno come è una serie interminabile di campionamenti successivi, di molecole che si uniscono e si integrano per creare elementi nuovi. Citando i padri del processo di campionamento.
"It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent" scrisse il poeta Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Quotation and Originality". Era il 1875, dieci anni prima la guerra civile aveva distrutto metà degli Stati Uniti d'America. Ricostruire le proprie idee attraverso il pensiero altrui. Contaminare. Mescolare le idee. Il dj moderno nasce due anni dopo, quando Thomas Edison inventa il primo fonografo, la macchina parlante, la macchina della memoria. La voce non è più in sincrono col tempo. Nasce la possibilità di mixare suoni preesistenti.
"Sampling is a new way of doing something that's been with us for a long time: creating with found objects"
Dj Spooky è come un vettore si muove a grande velocità lungo il globo, cambiando continuamente direzione come un'idea che si sviluppa attraverso le cellule della nostra mente. Sfrutta le autostrade digitali, si nutre delle creazioni altrui, le modifica, le sovrappone, le altera fino ad annullarne il copyright, le rimanda in circolazione come fossero semplici objets trouvées. Analogamente a Robert Rauchemberg, quando nel 1953 comprò un disegno di Willem De Koonig solo per cancellarlo, annullarne il copyright. "I sample all sorts of stuff. The strategy, of course, is to make it unrecornizable".
Con la seducente veste grafica disegnata dallo studio COMA (Cornelia Blatter e Marcel Hermans), Rhythm Science è un libro avvincente, che salta a ritmo frenetico da un tema all'altro senza bisogno di collegamenti certi. Spooky ci invita ad ascoltare il c-side del libro, un cd con musiche campionate dai suoni più disparati, incluse parole di Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Kurt Schwitters e tanti altri fino al Finnegans Wake di James Joyce.
L'estetica del sampling, il ritorno di immagini nascoste nel fondo della memoria oppure, più semplicemente, di suoni registrati su un i-Pod. Niente paura, la creatività trionferà sempre perché, per usare le parole di Mallarmé: "Un coup de dés, jamais n'abolira l'hazard".
Good CD with over-done liner notes.......2007-07-30
I like to think of this as a gimmick-packaged CD instead of a book. Paul D. Miller has assembled a remarkable mix of music. It's a shame that the words accompanying the music almost spoils it.
I might have liked it better if the thing wasn't so ugly to look at. Like some of MIT's other Mediaworks pamphlets, Rhythm Science is over-designed to the point that discerning the text is a chore. Unlike other publications in this series (e.g. Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling) the thoughts contained within do not really justify struggling through the various typefaces. Miller's prose is not well written nor does it contain any arresting new ideas; he seems content to regurgitate rhetoric and jargon.
I understand that part of Miller's intent is to apply DJ principles to prose. His facile attempts do not compare favourably with, say, Brion Gysin's & William Burroughs's cut-up & fold-in experiments in the '50s & '60s, or even to Jeff Noon's attempts at word remixing in his novels.
However don't let the disappointingly pseudo-intellectual and pseudo-hip writing put you off the music. Five stars for the CD, 1 star for the book: my overall rating is the median of the two.
5 stars +.......2005-06-19
Look people: Rhythm Science is about mixing art and sound. The book
is totally readable and accessible, and either people have a reading
level of a 2nd grade student or something, or they just don't get
theory stuff, or maybe they're just stupid. The reason the book is
great is that it draws together writing and music like a dj would and
should: with rhythm. Spooky mixes words and texts in the book like a
mix CD, and the CD that goes with the book is a kind of audio
companion. They are both pretty amazing, and they compliment each
other nicely. It's annoying to see people always come off
conservative and dumb when this is obviously an "avant garde" kind of
book. Come on people: it's not Martha Stewart telling you how to dj -
but you'd think that alot of the reviews are. People always want
something simple, and Spooky never does that. That's why this is an
amazing book. Think of the early Dada manifestoes (even Kurt
Schwitters is on the mix CD!), think of the early Surrealist
manifestoes of Andre Breton or Jean Cocteau, and then fast forward to
now. Digital media and cut culture blur all of these things together
- art, music, and writing, and Paul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky gets
that. The problem is it seems like he's ahead of alot of people who
don't. The book shows why.
Lyricism in the age of the mix.......2005-06-10
This book is not just a book, it is poetry, music and artwork all rolled into a unique look at copy culture and the mix. DJ Spooky transends the traditional notions of mix by including artists like Boulez and Debussy as well as other DJs typically associated with the genre. Using the words and voices of authors and poets like Gertrude Stein and James Joyce on the CD, Spooky reveals his theory of rhythm science explaned in the book and decodes, deconstructs and creates new through found objects.
A thoughtful 'exorcism' in regards to our Global Community.......2005-06-04
With Globalization approaching faster and faster, how does an artist/ writer/ muscician keep up? This incredibly thoughtful, poingnant, and reflective piece is the culmination of DJ Spooky's process that is the foundation of all his work. In it, he keeps a fast-paced conversation going on how we are overwhelmed with media, choice, community, and "networks" and how all these relate to the idea of "Rhythm Science". What is Rhytm Science? Its speaking through the voices that have overwhelmed a global community. Essentially, you are a propagator of these voices and using them to speak, not for you, but trough you is the key. One of the best 21st century pieces of writing on philosophy, art, and music that you will find. Plus, its as visual a book as it is literary. The CD that comes with it will surely bring all of what DJ Spooky talks about together for you in a unique auditory collage. Don't miss this one...
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Book Description
Technology matters, writes David Nye, because it is inseparable from being human. We have used tools for more than 100,000 years, and their central purpose has not always been to provide necessities. People excel at using old tools to solve new problems and at inventing new tools for more elegant solutions to old tasks. Perhaps this is because we are intimate with devices and machines from an early age--as children, we play with technological toys: trucks, cars, stoves, telephones, model railroads, Playstations. Through these machines we imagine ourselves into a creative relationship with the world. As adults, we retain this technological playfulness with gadgets and appliances--Blackberries, cell phones, GPS navigation systems in our cars.
We use technology to shape our world, yet we think little about the choices we are making. In Technology Matters, Nye tackles ten central questions about our relationship to technology, integrating a half-century of ideas about technology into ten cogent and concise chapters, with wide-ranging historical examples from many societies. He asks: Can we define technology? Does technology shape us, or do we shape it? Is technology inevitable or unpredictable? (Why do experts often fail to get it right?)? How do historians understand it? Are we using modern technology to create cultural uniformity, or diversity? To create abundance, or an ecological crisis? To destroy jobs or create new opportunities? Should "the market" choose our technologies? Do advanced technologies make us more secure, or escalate dangers? Does ubiquitous technology expand our mental horizons, or encapsulate us in artifice?
These large questions may have no final answers yet, but we need to wrestle with them--to live them, so that we may, as Rilke puts it, "live along some distant day into the answers."
Book Description
This is a history of the machine and a critical study of its effects on civilization. Mumford has drawn on every aspect of life to explain the machine and to trace its social results. "An extraordinarily wide-ranging, sensitive, and provocative book about a subject upon which philosophers have so far shed but little light" (Journal of Philosophy). Index; illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
An invaluable intellectual and cultural history of technology.......2006-08-08
Lewis Mumford's, Technics and Civilization, may be one of the most important and influential works concerning technological progress in Western Civilization and its cultural and environmental effects. The study covers a wide area of historical past stretching from the Roman Empire all the way to the present (1934). The importance of Mumford's study lies in the fact that it is not just another technophilic antiquarian study of technological improvement but rather it is an intelligent and highly critical look at the cultural development that gave rise to the machine and, from there, a critical study of how the "progress" of the machine affected the culture it was developing within. Mumford shows how the progression of the machine has affected nearly every aspect of human society including but not limited to sexuality, economy, ecology, warfare, occurrence of disease, and medicine.
The terminology surrounding matters of technology is not firmly defined and usually becomes a question of post-structural analysis when the meanings of these words are debated by academics in various fields of study. One of the main areas of confusion has been over the meaning of the word "tool" and the meaning of the word "machine." To quell confusion over the meaning of his own study, Mumford has given each word his own definition. According to Mumford: "[t]he tool lends it self to manipulation" while "[t]he machine lends it self to automatic action" (p.10). These definitions are important for understanding the meaning behind Mumford's study.
Mumford traces the cultural origins of the first machine, the mechanical clock, to the influences of monasticism and the Catholic teachings. The Church teachings of the early millennium stressed an extreme denial of the body which was viewed as sinful and polluted with the profanities of the earthly realm. Mumford believed that this denial of the body led to the growth of hatred for the organic which in turn fostered a cultural admiration for the machine as something that was disassociated from a polluted organic nature. Thus, as the first true machine, the mechanical clock fostered one of the original disassociations - the disassociation of time from the rhythms of nature. Although the Church teachings were based on the subjective belief in a utopian afterlife, the extreme denial of organic and natural earthly pleasures advocated by the early church caused an objective view of the organic to develop. By the 16th century the new protestant religion and the growth of objectivism coincided with what Mumford labeled the "disassociation of the animate and the mechanical" (p.31). This disassociation opened the floodgates for the objective sciences which were developing a common cultural understanding of the organic as merely a conglomeration of dead material to be studied and manipulated. The growth of objectivism coupled with the new protestant teachings, specifically the abandonment of the prohibition of usury, enabled the development of the early stages of capitalist economics by allowing God's work to be viewed as the accumulation of personal wealth. Not surprisingly, it was to the machine that these possessed western men turned to increase the production of wealth.
At this point in time, western civilization was in the first of three periods of technological development. Mumford labels these three stages based upon their method of energy production and organic material usage: the Eotechnic phase (based on water energy and wood), the Paleotechnic phase (based on coal energy and iron), and the Neotechnic phase (based on electricity and the alloys). Mumford explains that these stages overlap in many cases and should not be viewed as clean categories. Nevertheless, they do provide a useful framework for understanding the progression of the machine. The origins of capitalism occurred during the Eotechnic phase. Mumford finds the mine to be the central stimulant of Eotechnic technological progress. New mining technologies were created to extract increasing amounts of organic material to be converted into ever-increasing wealth for the emerging capitalist class. For Mumford, the Eotechnic phase cemented the alliance between capitalism and technology.
Soon, deforestation for fuel to be used in iron manufacture became a major cause for the progression into the Paleotechnic phase and the usage of coal as a primary energy source. Mumford labeled this Paleotechnic phase "The New Barbarism" (p.153). Although it decreased the levels of deforestation, the burning of coal ushered in profound environmental damage to the air and water. Through the use of coal and the development of steam power, production of iron and other goods increased exponentially at the expense of the emergent proletariat class. Mumford argued that this period gave birth to the "unsustainable society" (p.157) where military interests and warfare grew together with increased production and the need for continuous, escalating consumption, all of which were only possible due to the technological progress of the Paleotechnic period. As an example of this alliance, Mumford explains how the American Steel Manufacturing group deliberately destroyed the possibility of an arms reduction agreement, at the international arms conference of 1927, in order to maintain their profit share in the arms trade. (p.165).
The Neotechnic phase was ushered in with the spread of electricity as a power source at the beginning of the 19th century. The creation of electric power dramatically cleaned the air and water and the increased production enabled by the efficiency of electric power enabled another boom in the production of consumer items. However, the new phase also increased the power of those in control of technology, and Mumford shows how Neotechnic inventions such as the radio, photography, and the telephone were used by those in power to manipulate and manufacture consent in populations. Nevertheless, in the Neotechnic period, Mumford saw what he believed to be a possibility for the creation of a humane and compassionate society as well as a return to the organic.
Mumford saw the Paleotechnic phase as one that enabled and rewarded the anti-social characteristics of human nature, thus it inevitably created a society of inequality, increasing pollution, anomie, and warfare. Although Mumford was very aware of the destructive and anti-social record of technological progress, he refused to argue for the abandonment of the machine. Mumford stated that "lacking a cooperative social intelligence and good-will, our most refined technics promises no more for societies improvement..."(p.215). In this he is placing all the blame for the anti-social and ecologically genocidal effects of the machine on the economic organization of society. The problem with this analysis is that it is not teleologically secure. Written during the early years of the rise of Communism in the former Russian Kingdom, Mumford held out hope that, through Communism, the power of the machine could be harnessed to provide for the general welfare of society and that his hope in the future of technics would be born out. However, history has shown that technology in service of Communism, while it may help to normalize consumption, still produces many of the same destructive effects that it produced under capitalism - specifically militarism and environmental destruction. The hard reality is that Capitalism was not the cause of technological anti-socialism. Capitalism is a function of the same anti-social impulse that gave rise to technology - the will towards domination. Given the history of mechanical progress, it becomes essential to view technology as inherently anti-social. Rather than looking towards alternative methods of using machines of power to fix our world, as Mumford did, we should be thinking of and developing methods with which we can create a future world where machines and domination are not only unnecessairy but are also non-existant.
Wordy.......2005-06-01
This book is a historical interpretation of the effect of technology on society. Mumford traces the Industrial Revolution to its earliest roots, which he argues, go back to the invention of reliable timepieces in the Eleventh Century (whose invention was motivated, according to Mumford, by the need for recognizing prayer times in Catholic monasteries). Mumford also stresses the effects mining, the military, and the production of arms had on each other and on the development of technology, from earliest recorded history through modern times. Another recurrent theme is power, and how discoveries of new ways to harness power led to economic development. The final part of the book discusses the invention and assimilation of "the machine," as a generic concept for an advanced technology item. The book is illustrated with several sections of black-and-white photographs and reproductions of artwork. End material includes a chronology of inventions, a lengthy annotated bibliography, and an index.
In a discussion of the motivation behind invention, Mumford notes that "a good part of the mechanical elements in the day are attempts to counteract the effects of lengthening time and space distance. The refrigeration of eggs, for example, is an effort to space their distribution more uniformly than the hen herself is capable of doing...The accompanying pieces of mechanical apparatus do nothing to improve the product itself: refrigeration merely halts the process of decomposition." Is this progress? Although he originally wrote this book back in the 1930s, well before our present energy crises, Mumford was adamant that renewable energy sources must supply the power of the future. He is an advocate for wind and water energy, and he dreams of a day when the power of the sun can be used to generate electricity. Mumford is also disturbed by rampant consumerism. He quotes a Hoover Committee report on a survey of Recent Economics that states "The survey has proved conclusively, what has long been held theoretically to be true, that wants are almost insatiable; that one want makes way for another. The conclusion is that economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied." Interesting points such as these, which sound remarkably fresh today, can be found scattered amongst the text. Unfortunately, however, such gems are overshadowed by the sheer volume of text. This book would benefit greatly from an abridgment that would bring out the best, most important ideas by eliminating the wordy asides and statements of personal opinion.
Worth the time spent reading!.......2003-09-04
Mumford has got to be one of the most over-looked (by main-stream) social critics of our time. He covers and unravels our confusing society so well, even though this book was written some time ago. Mumford's points ring quite true even in the 21st century.
Lengthy read but, for those who are serious about making sense of "why" things are they way they are here in the "civilized" world, Mumford is worth it.
Complete.......2002-05-14
From the beginning of time, technology has affected our lives. Learn how every invention (from the greatest milestone of them all: the clock) through history influences society and the way we live and think.
Excellent source for everyone wanting to reflect deeply on technology.
The First Critique of the Myth of Technology.......2000-11-24
Lewis Mumford is widely regarded as a critic of architecture, but his true importance in intellectual history is as a critic of technology and the myth of progress that accompanies technology, making it seem as if every technological advance is a step forward in civilization. That the events from 1945 onward dispute this claim would seem evident, but themselves are brushed over in favor of the prevailing paradigm.
Mumford was the first to take a critical look at technology and its accompanying mythos, and even though this book was later surpassed by his masterpiece, The Myth of the Machine, it is still worth reading for its approach to the tenor of its time (written during the Depression).
You can safely ignore the last chapters when Mumford attempts to offer an alternative to the technological society. Like most critics, he is mercifully short on alternatives. (Considering what alternatives were given humanity over the centuries, you can understand why I said that.) Until we truly understand technology and the role it has taken in our lives, we will be no closer to a solution than Mumford was in the Thirties.
For anyone who wishes to study the intellectual history of the West, this is an indispensible volume.
Book Description
This study is the first of its kind: a street-level inside account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. Stephen Kotkin was the first American in 45 years to be allowed into Magnitogorsk, a city built in response to Stalin's decision to transform the predominantly agricultural nation into a "country of metal." With unique access to previously untapped archives and interviews, Kotkin forges a vivid and compelling account of the impact of industrialization on a single urban community.
Kotkin argues that Stalinism offered itself as an opportunity for enlightenment. The utopia it proffered, socialism, would be a new civilization based on the repudiation of capitalism. The extent to which the citizenry participated in this scheme and the relationship of the state's ambitions to the dreams of ordinary people form the substance of this fascinating story. Kotkin tells it deftly, with a remarkable understanding of the social and political system, as well as a keen instinct for the details of everyday life.
Kotkin depicts a whole range of life: from the blast furnace workers who labored in the enormous iron and steel plant, to the families who struggled with the shortage of housing and services. Thematically organized and closely focused, Magnetic Mountain signals the beginning of a new stage in the writing of Soviet social history.
Customer Reviews:
Stalinism as a civilization?.......2007-04-07
Stephen Kotkin's "Magnetic Mountain" is a Foucault-inspired attempt at describing the civilization known as Stalinism from the 'bottom up', and to give expression to the language, experience and ideology of the common people living in that society. At the same time, the book, his PhD work, criticizes a lot of prior historical theory on the USSR in general and the Stalinist period in particular. This forms a significant part of the book, but is relegated entirely to the footnotes, making it particularly worthwhile in this case to pay attention to those.
Kotkin's description of the creation of the enormous steel plant and factory city of Magnitogorsk, his pars pro toto for the period, is extremely extensive, even including a host of technical details and a history of the factory itself. This is interesting enough at first, but the depth to which he analyzes it does not really match the novelty of the subject, so that it easily gets boring after a while.
The second part of the book is much more interesting, and is Kotkin's description of the city Magnitogorsk. He writes about the enormous efforts expended to create a somewhat viable city in barren and inhospitable terrain, and the constant lack of supplies, personnel and training that hampers every effort at improvement. Recreation, the housing situation, medical facilities, cultural development: every aspect of life in the city is chronicled. Because of the Foucaultian approach, his emphasis is in particular on the way that the people regarded themselves and the society around them, and the Stalinist project of 'building socialism' they were a part of. The last two chapters are devoted to describing the political situation, including of course an extensive account of the Great Purges of 1937-1939.
Even aside from the ineffectual first half, the book has some serious flaws though. Kotkin spends a lot of time analyzing the effects and meaning of the shortage-based planned economy of the period, and while his demonstration of how this shortage was fundamental to keeping the regime in power and keeping ideological control is excellent, his understanding of economics is much less so. He is also quite strongly pro-capitalist, and regularly approaches the subject in the condescending tone of one who knew all along that socialism must fail. What makes this even more dubious is that he takes over without criticism Stalin's definition of socialism as state property of everything but personal assets, which is controversial to say the least.
Equally, despite a lot of heavy-handed criticism for Lewin, Fitzpatrick and Getty on the point of their analysis of the Purges and its cause (as well as the general causes of Stalinism), he does not really present an alternative explanation of the Great Purges either. He spends a lot of words showing the way the Purges took place, but there is no real theory of its underlying causes, except tentatively noting that it might be construed as a Party backlash against the technical bureaucracy which increasingly made it obsolete. But this does not account for why the Purges mainly took place within Party ranks.
Kotkin must be commended for putting Stalinism as such a bit more in an international perspective, which has rarely been done, emphasizing the degree to which Stalin could use (or believe himself) the idea of the USSR as a completely surrounded and constantly beleaguered state. Yet at the same time Kotkin seems to draw the conclusion from the general period of economic planning in the major world nations of those days that such interventionism must necessarily lead to a totalitarian mindset. This, at least, is strongly the tendency of his afterword to the Purges chapter.
This socio-economic blindness on his part, whether it is dismissing class analysis, positing capitalism as natural and inescapable, or critiquing interventionism is what seriously flaws his otherwise strong contribution to the historiography of the USSR.
Great history.......2005-09-21
This is an incredible work of scholarship that is also incredibly entertaining. Kotkin paints a detailed portrait of life in the Soviet Union's steel city under Stalin and places it in a challenging and profound theoretical framework. Maybe a bit heavy on Foucault, but stunning nonetheless.
Very important!!.......2003-07-11
That's an important book on Stalinism and Soviet Union. It presents new extremely interesting and well documented information about key aspects of life and politics mainly during the Stalinist period. What makes this book really important though is that this information is used in a structured way to substantiate a well-defined interpretation of Stalinism as civilization. Kotkin is not the first researcher to analyze USSR in these terms (many people see the Soviet regime as a peculiar type of theocracy), but it is one of the first attempts to study the civilizational aspect in such depth.
Another achievement of the author is he manages to transcend the ideological commitments and polarizations that are connected with his broader theme. "The Magnetic Mountain" is a sober, academic study of Stalinism and therefore, it is bound to displease those who are looking for excuses for the Soviet regime or those who looking for stongly worded condemnations and connections with present enemies.
My only criticism is that, unless I missed the references to it, Kotkin does not mention E. Wallerstein's essay "Capitalist civilization". I believe that the approaches of the two authors have many parallels and it would have been interesting to compare them.
Narrow and Illuminating Study.......2002-09-28
Kotkin has done excellent work here in Magnetic Mountain. This is a landmark study on the building of an industrial city in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era. It's extremely bizarre that some have taken the view that it is a pro-Stalin work. I can only conclude that they haven't read Magnetic Mountain but only certain reviews or are so head-in-the-sand dogmatic that they render any view outside of cold war totalitarian model as pro-Stalinist.
Especially ironic is the Stalinist tone of many who oppose any view outside this strict cold war construction. Like it or not the facts are many who lived in the Soviet Union during that era believed in communism as their salvation and future. I've lived in Russia and have seen the older generation protesting in pro-Stalin demonstrations in St Petersburg's Palace Square. Stating this doesn't make Kotkin pro anything. It makes him a historian.
Kotkin's rendering of Magnitogorsk is great history. From the initial idealistic workers that established the city, he quickly shows the disillusionment that occurred when theory and practical organization clashed. Labor shortages abound in this workers paradise ironically because workers couldn't stand the conditions. Kotkin shows how internal passports and party cards gradually began to be used to make sure workers could not move freely or that party members could be monitored.
Not that all was oppression. He correctly describes how many used the opportunities that were available to proceed with gaining an education in the evening technical programs that proliferated in the Magnitogorsk community.
Kotkin does not shy away from the effects of the purges, but he does describe them as being focused particularly on party members. With the benefits of communist party membership came the dangerously increased odds of being targeted in the purges. He's especially effective in his description of how the balance of power was structured between the technical experts running the factories, the local communist organization and the NKVD.
This is good history. It may ruffle feathers, but more importantly it illuminates the complexity of life in the Soviet Union. Citizens in the SU were much more involved, benefited from and bought into the dogma of Soviet marxism much more than the Conquest cold war scholarship of that era showed. Having spoken to many of the older Russian generation myself I've seen the confirmation in the discussions.
Ignore the lock-step cold warriors; if you are a historian of left, middle or right wing views you'll find this is history well worth reading.
Fascinating Book, But Limited Conclusion.......2001-12-15
At several points in Magnetic Mountain, the Stalinist state appears like "Bizarro" world, where up is down, people permanently dwell in "temporary" cities, and claims of exceeding expectations really meant falling far short of the goal. Yet, according to Stephen Kotkin, all of these apparent contradictions were perfectly sensible and functional within Stalinist civilization. Kotkin, in his analysis of Magnitogorsk --the industrial centerpiece of Stalin's five-year plans-- demonstrates how and why society functioned, treating Stalinism in an analytical style not unlike those employed by anthropologist observing and explaining the bizarre behavior of non-western "others". Kotkin considers Stalinism as civilization rather than solely a political ideology because it provided unique ways of thinking, speaking, living, organizing, and constructing.
Kotkin's work is an excellent blend of theoretical models and empirical evidence. The book, dedicated to Michel Foucault, embraces many of the suggestions proffered by the late theoretician, such as the definition of "power" as a defining rather than an oppressing "force" and the need to explore power on the micro-level. And true to form, Kotkin locates power in a wide variety of domains- from the divide between the imagined and real layout of Socialist City to a list of names and profession tacked onto the front of a workers' barrack. Kotkin convincingly demonstrates that while party ideology and administrative policy was imposed from above, it was by no means absolute. Realities within and without the "official" system created spaces that shaped resistance and defined the ways in which the individuals could utilize the to accommodate their needs/interest. For example, Kotkin argues that policies that outlawed rent and obligated the state to house and employ gave individuals considerable justification for acting against and successfully resisting the efforts of "officials" trying to enforce decisions on housing and work allocation determined by the State apparatus. True to his Foucauldian sympathies, Kotkin maintains that Stalinism defined what it meant to be a good Soviet citizen and, unwittingly, the legitimate ways in which the good citizen could contest the unpopular policies.
Kotkin's micro-level archaeology of power in Magnitogorsk upsets the totalizing reputation of totalitarianism. Stalinism offered ample ideology but skimped on the details of just how Marxist/Leninist analysis related to developing a real industrial community. Rather than dictating and imposing the minutiae of everyday life, Kotkin claims that it was the incessant disharmony between ideology and practicality, as manifested in the institutional split between the Party and Administration, that created the contradictory atmosphere within Magnitogorsk, and, paradoxically, permitted resistance but also facilitated repression. Overlapping and unspecified jurisdictions made it difficult to determine who was in charge of what, but the rivalries generated by this discontinuity of policy and practice ultimately fueled the purges. Ironically, the many ways in which Stalinism empowered the worker, by allowing worker-run newspapers, elevating the worker as a mythical hero, and iterating the Marxist/Leninist values of equality, brotherhood, and collective ownership, the Stalinist state promulgated the language that allowed individuals to contest the State's designs. The nature of criticism was tailored to the system. In newspapers, local officials in the party or Soviet could be legitimately critiqued within the bounds of acceptable discourse-- what Kotkin terms, "Speaking Bolshevik". By claiming that all aspects of Soviet society were controlled by workers, Stalinist Russia may have unwittingly achieved this goal. Contrary to the totalitarian myth, Stalinism did not transform the Soviet population into inert slaves of the State.
In Kotkin's estimation, Magnitogorsk in the 1930's is indicative of the general social dynamics that defined the Stalinist State. Magnitogorsk was undoubtedly important in terms of its economic output and as a symbol of Soviet progress under Stalin; the city itself, was clearly saturated by the strange interaction of myth and reality, ideology and novelty, that made Stalin and his Soviet Union into international enigmas. However, Kotkin's claims that Magnitogorsk was a representative microcosm are questionable. A major component of Kotkin's narrative is Magnitogorsk's fundamental "newness". According to Kotkin, Magnitogorsk was a region with little historical baggage, devoid of local power dynamics, large populations, or interests that could obstruct Stalin's grand design. Moreover, on the sparsely populate plains east of the Urals, Marxist/Leninist ideologues had the rare "clean slate" from which to imagine their ideal city. Magnitogorsk's unique characteristics raise the questions: Did Stalinism function comparably in Kiev, Moscow, or Leningrad? What Kotkin generally describes as resistance and his numerous examples of unclear and ill-planned State policies may have been primarily the products of Magnitogorsk's lack of precedence and not something inherent to Stalinism. While an excellent regional study, Kotkin's work needs to be considered in a comparison to other sites of heavy Stalinist intervention and to cities/regions that existed long before the Bolshevik revolution.
For both the theoretically and empirically minded, Kotkin's work is rewarding. Strict Foucauldians may bristle at the degree of "agency" Kotkin allows his subjects and empiricists will undoubtedly raise the issue of Magnitogorsk's, but it is a engaging book that effectively explains why people not only tolerated, but embraced Stalinism. Magnetic Mountain is by no means the definitive book on the first decades of the USSR but it is an important historiographical contribution to the still woefully under-researched Soviet Union.
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