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Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer, by Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. 368 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-674-00889-8.
Trevor Pinch is one of the leading sociologists of technology, and one of the founders of the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach to science, technology, and society. Given that Contemporary Sociology still has no Technology category for its review section, it is perhaps not surprising that Pinch and his student Frank Trocco have chosen to write a book for the general public. And the book will work for that audience. Still, despite the fact that this book is slickly designed (for example, the page numbers are found within a small circuit schematic on the bottom of each page) and well-illustrated, and despite the fact that theory is addressed only in part of the very last section and largely relegated to endnotes, sociologists of markets-and of many other sectors of society, for that matter-will nonetheless find this book interesting and informative. They may even enjoy it, as I did.
Pinch and Trocco have two goals in this book. The first is to tell a historical story that they personally find interesting and important, and...