"This global account of the history of technology casts aside the usual stories of what a few people invented and instead analyses what people and societies use. It reassesses the significance of the technologies usually held to be transformative - from the Pill and information technology to aviation and the atomic bomb - and places alongside them a huge variety of technologies from all around the world. These important but uncrecognised examples of technology range from Spanish synthetic petrol to Egyptian fighter jets; from Japanese rickshaws to Nazi factory whaling ships; from American gas chambers to the meat factories of the River Plate and from Soviet tractors to Turkish battleships. In explaining their significance, 'The Shock of the Old' radically revises our understanding of the relationship between technology and society. Interweaving political, economic and cultural history, 'The Shock of the Old' challenges the idea that we live in an era of ever increasing change and suggests that the technologies that will be the most important in the 21st century are often overlooked. In dispelling misplaced futurism about the so-called 'information age' it calls for - and exemplifies - a radical new way of thinking about history and technology." -- BOOK JACKET.