This book foregrounds the pressures that three transformative technologies in the long sixteenth century—the printing press, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass—placed on long-held literary practices, as well as on cultural and social structures. Sheila J. Nayar disinters the clash between humanist drives and print culture; places the rise of gunpowder warfare beside the equivalent rise in chivalric romance; and illustrates fraught attempts by humanists to hold on to classicist traditions in the face of seismic changes in navigation. Lively and engaging, this study illuminates not only how literature responded to radical technological changes, but also how literature was sometimes forced, through unanticipated destabilizations, to reimagine itself. By tracing the early modern human’s inter-animation with print, powder, and compass, Nayar exposes how these technologies assisted in producing new ways of seeing, knowing, and being in the world.

Innovation is not easy. Understanding the liability of newness but the potential for greatness is the central theme of this work. Innovation Renaissance explores and debunks the myths that have arisen from the proliferation of misleading and often confusing popular press treatments of creativity and innovation. Examples include the notion that successful entrepreneurs are winners because they are innovative--whereas creativity and business start-up acumen are not the same, and are rarely paired--or the idea of disruptive technology, which has now become the buzzword equivalent to radical new technology products or services, despite the fact that new technologies tend to offer simple, limited-capability products or services to satisfy overlooked customer demand. The popularity of open innovation has spawned assumptions, like the idea that crowdsourcing will increase the number of truly new ideas--but in fact the more novel these ideas, the less likely they are to be adopted by incumbent firms because they are less familiar. Starting by defining innovation and the theories that have arisen surrounding it, Ettlie considers individual creativity and innovativeness, radical innovation, new products, new services, process innovation, and information technology. There is special emphasis on neglected topics such as the dark side of the innovation process--the unintended consequences of new ventures. Finally, the last chapter of the book summarizes a prescriptive model of the innovation process and attempts to answer the question: what causes innovation? Three major constructs are explored: leadership, enhancing capabilities and integration. This informative and unique text is designed as a resource for postgraduate students, academics, and professionals deeply committed to understanding and working through the innovation process. The book includes an introduction to the subject before moving on to an in-depth study of emerging evidence and topics in the field.

One of the most important scientific classics, and first to offer detailed technical drawings illustrating mining techniques, field research, and the earliest scientific methods. Translated by Herbert Hoover. 289 woodcuts.

This volume offers a comprehensive historical survey of medicine in sixteenth-century Europe and examines both medical theories and practices within their intellectual and social context. Nutton investigates the changes brought about in medicine by the opening-up of the European world to new drugs and new diseases, such as syphilis and the Sweat, and by the development of printing and more efficient means of communication. Chapters examine how civic institutions such as Health Boards, hospitals, town doctors and healers became more significant in the fight against epidemic disease, and special attention is given to the role of women and domestic medicine. The final section, on beliefs, explores the revised Galenism of academic medicine, including a new emphasis on anatomy and its most vocal antagonists, Paracelsians. The volume concludes by considering the effect of religious changes on medicine, including the marginalisation, and often expulsion, of non-Christian practitioners. Based on a wide reading of primary sources from literature and art across Europe, Renaissance Medicine is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of the history of medicine and disease in the sixteenth century.

Some of today's foremost Renaissance scholars look afresh at the remarkable products of the first age of print and explore how these anticipated many of the conditions of the present digital age.

Historian Thomas J. Misa's sweeping history of the relationship between technology and society over the past 500 years reveals how technological innovations have shaped -- and have been shaped by -- the cultures in which they arose. Spanning the preindustrial past, the age of scientific, political, and industrial revolutions, as well as the more recent eras of imperialism, modernism, and global security, this compelling work evaluates what Misa calls "the question of technology." Misa brings his acclaimed text up to date by examining how today's unsustainable energy systems, insecure information networks, and vulnerable global shipping have helped foster geopolitical risks and instability. A masterful analysis of how technology and culture have influenced each other over five centuries, Leonardo to the Internet frames a history that illuminates modern-day problems and prospects faced by our technology-dependent world. Praise for the first edition "Closely reasoned, reflective, and written with insight, grace, and wit, Misa's book takes us on a personal tour of technology and history, seeking to define and analyze paradigmatic techno-cultural eras." -- Technology and Culture "Follows [Thomas] Hughes's model of combining an engaging historical narrative with deeper lessons about technology." -- American Scholar "His case studies, such as that of Italian futurism or the localizations of the global McDonalds, provide good starting points for thought and discussion." -- Journal of Interdisciplinary History "This review cannot do justice to the precision and grace with which Misa analyzes technologies in their social contexts. He convincingly demonstrates the usefulness of his conceptual model." -- History and Technology "A fascinating, informative, and well-illustrated book." -- Choice

East Asia has in many ways been the cockpit of the globalization process. If the phenomenon as it is generally defined is largely recognized as a relatively recent one, the countries that have experienced most change during this period have been in the region. Rapid economic growth leading to the Tigers label was followed by financial crisis and partial recovery. Underlying this has been the remarkable success story of Japan since the Second World War, followed by the current, seemingly inexorable progress of China towards centrality on the world stage. Jang-Sup Shin has amassed an international team of contributors to shed light on how the various Asian countries have responded to the globalization process. These include James Crotty, Lu Ding and Ha-Joon Chang.

This book investigates the importance of printing in early-modern Central Europe, revealing a complicated web of connections linking printers and scholars, Jews and Christians, from the Baltic to the Adriatic.

This is the first book to comprehensibly describe how technology has shaped society and the environment over the last 200 years. It will be useful for researchers, as a textbook for graduate students, for people engaged in long-term policy planning in industry and government, for environmental activists, and for the wider public interested in history, technology, or environmental issues.

The early modern period saw gunpowder weapons reach maturity and become a central feature of European warfare, on land and at sea. This exciting collection of essays brings together a distinguished and varied selection of modern scholarship on the transformation of war”often described as a ’military revolution’”during the period between 1450 and 1660.