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Changes in the Technological Landscape. Essays in the History of Science and Technology. By Svante Lindquist. Sagamore Beach,Mass.: Science History Publications, 2011. Pp. xii+301. $55.
Svante Lindquist received the 2010 Leonardo da Vinci Medal, the highest recognition from the Society for the History of Technology, for an outstanding career in the field. In his excellent and witty da Vinci address, Lindquist shared with us his passion for woodwork.He makes his own pieces of furniture, seeks perfection, and keeps some of the pieces while excluding or reworking others, finding a common style among them. Thus, it is not surprising that in the preface of Changes in the Technological Landscape, the same topic of carpentry is used as a metaphor for its rationale and even as a classifying grid for the importance of the seventeen chapters.
This volume is a collection of articles and papers encompassing a time span of more than twenty-five years, arranged into three parts: "Historiography," with six articles; "Case Studies," with seven articles; and "Nobeliana," with the remaining four articles. In the preface Lindquist states that his masterpiece, his original contribution, "the cabinet [placed] at the forefront as you enter the shop" (p. xiv), is the first chapter: "Changes in the Technological Landscape. The Temporal Dimensions in the Growth and Decline of Large Technological Systems." The first version dates to...