{"product_id":"the-broken-machine-histories-of-technology-social-order-and-the-self-9780262553346","title":"The Broken Machine: Histories of Technology, Social Order, and the Self","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Edward Jones-Imhotep\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: MIT Press\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: MIT Press\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: History\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA cultural history of technological breakdown, social order, and the self in the modern Atlantic World.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Broken Machine\u003c\/i\u003e explores the intertwined histories of breaking machines, social order, and the self in the modern Atlantic World. Edward Jones-Imhotep reveals how breakdowns are not the kinds of objects we imagine. More than just material failures or social disruptions, since the 18th century, breakdowns served as moments for defining a modern technological self and the core values of social order in Western democracies: what kinds of people belonged to it, what virtues they should possess, and who stood outside it. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTracing this politics of breakdown and belonging across two centuries and two continents, the book rewrites five well-known episodes in the history of technology, influential histories that we thought we knew: the politics of the guillotine during the French Revolution, the causes of railway accidents and the rise of \"systems\" as a tool of self-responsibility and self-governance in Victorian Britain, the surprising antebellum history of breakdown in American slave cultures, the Gantt chart's origins as a Progressive Era tool for linking failure as a condition of industrial machinery to failure as a kind of person in the US, and, finally, the electronic malfunctions during the Cold War that helped define the rational selves underpinning Western democracy.","brand":"MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47891385548951,"sku":"9780262553346","price":3825.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9780262553346.webp?v=1781183502","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/the-broken-machine-histories-of-technology-social-order-and-the-self-9780262553346","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}