Edgerton’s book delivers a great historical analysis of technology throughout the 20th century. His primary argument seems to be the differentiation of invention and implementation, to which he argues are not one in the same, but complementary components of each other. I like how he argues that, “to become widely used, a thing does not have to be massively better than what preceded it; it need only be marginally better than alternatives (Edgerton 8.)” He goes on to discuss this idea throughout the book in relation to many different technologies, and why they faded out or stuck around. While we associate birth control with the innovation in the 1960s “sexual revolution” and the invention of the pill, we forget that methods of birth control existed long before. While other inventions –particularly related to war–, such as airplanes for warfare, better machinery and transportation (naval ships, tanks, etc.) and the atomic bomb created a space for technological warfare, they never did away with basic warfare (standing armies, basic combat.) Thinking about it now however, technology today has begun to replace “boots on the ground” warfare, particularly with drone warfare.
The chapter that I found particularly interesting was the one on nations. Edgerton discusses techno-nationalism and techno-globalism. He states, “on the one hand, we have techno-globalism, particularly focused on communications technologies, which endlessly repeats the idea that the world is becoming a “global village.” He denotes the globalization theory as backwards because it suggests that the as nations become more reliant on each other, the world is moving into a direction in which nations are non-existent and the world is completely interconnected. He states that techno-nationalism similarly, “assumes that the key unit of analysis for the study of technology is the nation: nations (…) are the cultures of innovation, that diffuse, that use technology (Edgerton 105.)”
His idea of globalization and techno-nationalism reminds me of what we learned about China reading Brownell’s Training the Body for China. Chinese culture places such a significance on games and nationalism, not just with sports, but with Wei qui and martial arts as well. Techno-globalism is also an aspect of gameplay and sports. Mass media and commercialization are both aspects of techno-globalization in a way.