...YE AR S CE L EB RA TIN G6 HISTORY HISTORY A World Transformed II: World in Flux E D I TOR PW AA -TA ST IC Y EA R S! RESOURCE Tania Asnes A L PACA-IN-CHIEF 2 0 1 2 Daniel Berdichevsky the World Scholar’s Cup® ® HISTORY | 1 History Resource 2012: A World in Flux Table of Contents Preface: A Swiftly Texting Planet ................................................................. 2 I. The Determinators....................................................................................... 4 Toward a model for technological change............................................. 5 I’m on Team IDUAR ................................................................................ 6 Disruptive technologies..............................................................................8 Classic Technologies ...................................................................................9 The time of wheels ..................................................................................9 How the stirrup stirred things up ......................................................10 Print all about it: the printing press ................................................... 11 II. Transformations in Everyday Life .......................................................... 13 Turning on the lights ................................................................................. 13 Picking up the telephone .......................................
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...Acknowledgments ix Acknowledgments This book owes a great deal to the mental energy of several generations of scholars. As an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, Francis Wilson made me aware of the importance of migrant labour and Robin Hallett inspired me, and a generation of students, to study the African past. At the School of Oriental and African Studies in London I was fortunate enough to have David Birmingham as a thesis supervisor. I hope that some of his knowledge and understanding of Lusophone Africa has found its way into this book. I owe an equal debt to Shula Marks who, over the years, has provided me with criticism and inspiration. In the United States I learnt a great deal from ]eanne Penvenne, Marcia Wright and, especially, Leroy Vail. In Switzerland I benefitted from the friendship and assistance of Laurent Monier of the IUED in Geneva, Francois Iecquier of the University of Lausanne and Mariette Ouwerhand of the dépurtement évangélrlyue (the former Swiss Mission). In South Africa, Patricia Davison of the South African Museum introduced me to material culture and made me aware of the richness of difference; the late Monica Wilson taught me the fundamentals of anthropology and Andrew Spiegel and Robert Thornton struggled to keep me abreast of changes in the discipline; Sue Newton-King and Nigel Penn brought shafts of light from the eighteenthcentury to bear on early industrialism. Charles van Onselen laid a major part of the intellectual foundations on...
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