Technohistory!

Gutenberg Bible Leaf

Department of Archives & Special Collections

We can see you...we know that you are reading this on a computer, or tablet, or smartphone, all testaments to the role that technology plays in our everyday lives. In the centuries since Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1440, technology has seemingly assumed ever-increasing significance in our society.

In fall 2017, Professor Elizabeth Drummond's Honors History class at Loyola Marymount University is examining the social and cultural history of technology, taking as its foundation the idea that technology is not beyond history but rather grounded in it, developing in response to specific needs and desires. Students will explore the development specific technologies; the political, intellectual, economic, social, and cultural contexts in which different technologies developed; the ways in which technologies have transformed societies and power relationships, including those around gender, race, and class; the way sin which technologies have affected world views, the nature of knowledge and authority, and understandings of space and time; and how our everyday lives are constantly shaped by technologies, which in turn are shaped by our own wants, needs, and desires. They focused on a variety of technologies - from the printing press, to the telescope, to the spinning jenny, to the railroad, to film, to contraceptive devices, to the atomic bomb, to the Internet (and many more - as a means to understrand broader historical developments in Europe, as well as Europeans' interactions with other parts of the world, since about 1440.

Over the course of the semester, the students will be building this website. This site is thus a work in progress.