Time: The Familiar Stranger by J. T. Fraser

Abstract

358 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE considered. Given Levinson’s underlying thesis that technologies embody human ideas, these communication technologies are espe­ cially interesting to study because they may constitute “meta-cognitive technologies”—a new medium to supplement and even supplant human thought. Much of the substantive portion of the book is devoted to a consideration of the effect of these technologies on our capacity to generate thoughts and ideas. Levinson is generally an optimist about technology, and, although he is critical of some areas, notably the present claims of artificial intelligence to emulate human thought, he sees the rationality embedded in the machines as the long-term guarantee of their progressive and beneficial character. The book concludes on an unfashionably optimistic note with the author speculating over the possibilities of a technological reshaping of the cosmos through space travel and life-creating technologies. Ultimately, I found Mind at Large to be profoundly disappointing. The problem is that Levinson’s conception of technology—that of ideas embedded in matter—is not so much wrong as impoverished. He excludes from his tale all the things that are the life’s breath of technology and that make technology such an interesting phenome­ non to study. We learn nothing of the nuts and bolts of the devices themselves; we learn nothing about the people who have brought the devices into existence; and we learn nothing about the economic, social, and political factors that have shaped the devices. Paradoxically, we even learn very little about that which Levinson endorses, namely, Darwinian selection applied to technology. It would be an interesting exercise to see in detail the competitive struggle between various technologies, but that would be another book. Philosophy of technol­ ogy needs to come to terms with modern historical studies of technology that point to the fact that it is not so much mind as culture that shapes technology. As long as philosophers of technology con­ tinue to deal with technology as an appendage to the realm of ideas we will be left with a hollow tale. Trevor Pinch Dk Pinch is lecturer in sociology at the University of York. He is the author of several books and articles in the sociology of science and technology and coeditor (with Wiebe Bijker and Thomas Hughes) of The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987). Time: The Familiar Stranger. By J. T. Fraser. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Pp. 389; illustrations, notes, glossary, appendixes, bibliography, index. $24.95. Nearly every held of intellectual discourse must deal with the problem of time, and those investigating the subject inevitably come across the work of independent scholar J. T. Fraser. President of the TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 359 International Society for the Study of Time and senior editor of the six volumes (with more planned) of The Study of Time, Fraser has long been dedicated to synthesizing the work of historians, philosophers, physicists, psychologists, linguists, and anthropologists as it pertains to this vital subject. Despite the uneven quality of the essays included, The Study of Time has been an immensely valuable resource. Those with less time on hand may want to see The Voices of Time, twenty-seven essays culled from the society’s meetings. In his own writings on time, Fraser has continued the laudable emphasis on interdisciplinary scholarship. Fraser’s latest book, Time: The Familiar Stranger, is the product of over three decades’ study and summarizes many of the recent contributions to the matter of time. His erudition is truly impressive, ranging from the origins of the concept of time in prehistory to the invention and dissemination of mechanical time, from the biological foundations of the “time sense” to the challenging reformulations of the idea of time embodied in modern physics. Fraser handles each of these subjects with impressive wit and grace. He has a knack for lucid prose and an enviable gift for bringing difficult abstractions into clear focus. Fraser seeks “an integrated understanding of time,” and this book marks a long step toward that understanding. Historians of technology will find little that is new here, however. Fraser draws heavily on the work of Lynn White, Carlo Cipolla, and Joseph Needham...