Unbound prometheus ebook review

This period is known as the second industrial revolution because the introduction of science as the foundation for technology represented a change almost as significant as the initial period of mutual escalation between workers and merchants that started industrialization. The second industrial revolution relied on another episode of mutual escalation, although it was between groups, in which the processes of innovating and exploiting those innovations was distributed among individuals.

We still look to brilliant individuals to credit with significant inventions but starting in the later s, it was really a web of connections that resulted in change rather than any lone genius. However, by putting this collective cognition to work on the problem of technological innovation the pace of improvements took off dramatically.

The escalation process is a bit more difficult to see in this period because the process of discovery had been institutionalized with the invention of science. The scientists were interested in understanding the world, in the production and verification of new knowledge.

The industrialists, by this time, realized that there was no better path to finding better ways of making things than using scientific knowledge to improve their processes. Thus the industrialists were willing to spend money on scientific research but wanted the scientists to concentrate on their particular industrial process. Both scientific work and industrial production were carried out by large groups of people, all doing small parts of the overall body of work.

Corporate CEOs could direct their employees but they still had to be responsive to their customers and their potential investors. Individual scientists had to build on the foundations laid down by other scientists.

No individuals could direct the path taken by either science or industry; neither the future needs of society nor the time and place of future discoveries could be predicted. Still, the industrialists would try to direct science while the scientists would try to get funding from the industrialists for pure research, the mutual escalation leading to both scientific discovery and technological innovation.

Landes carries the reader through the First World War, the interwar years and the ruinous reparations imposed on Germany though he is quite firm in his belief that this was a new situation in the world and had Germany been the victor, they would have been equally hard on their enemies, and so Europe was in a kind of trap.

He takes us through the depression and the Nazi re-armament, World War II and the rebuilding of Europe With the Americans, at least, having learned the lesson of the first go around. The story he tells of the 20th century is really one of economics rather than innovation and at one point, he even goes so far as to make the ludicrous argument that all 20th century inventions up to the mid 60s when this was written were merely incremental improvements on technology that existed at the turn of the century.

But the strength of the book is really the marvellously detailed history of the industrial revolution, first in England, then in Europe with a bit about North America and Australia; the rise of Asia being a bit too recent for much discussion. With only pages, though, he cannot give more than an overview of many of the technologies that required hundreds of innovations to get to their ultimate form steam engines as just one example of many but the main thrust of the book is to show how industrialization became a self-sustaining activity with no end in sight.

For that story, this book succeeds mightily. Highly recommended to anyone who is even slightly interested in technology. A surprisingly clear-headed book in many ways about methodology, shortcomings of too little hindsight, and some depressingly relevant bits about ideology and economics that sound too prophetic to be real in late The epilogue chapter in this new edition was odd, however, and felt largely like the built-up irritation with shallow political buzzword inundation, and so read as rather too reactionary in an unpleasant and potentially largely false direction.

I, however, am no expert, so I'm not A surprisingly clear-headed book in many ways about methodology, shortcomings of too little hindsight, and some depressingly relevant bits about ideology and economics that sound too prophetic to be real in late I, however, am no expert, so I'm not much one to verify the truth, only the tone. Sep 13, Dan rated it really liked it Shelves: Very important, detailed book about the emergence of a Western industrial self-sustaining machine.

In particular, I appreciated his decision to focus on particular industries, like textiles and metallurgy, down to the nitty-gritty. I recall reading a piece somewhere a couple of years back where the author said that he never knew what a textile actually was in all of his years of history classes.

You can't read this book without learning a fair bit about technology. These books provide a broad foundation in logical, epistemological, and philosophical techniques that are sound and valid. A reader who masters these books will quickly grasp the complex, dynamic, nonlinear aspects of social [found in the following list] Books with the best decision theoretic and philosophical foundation by Michael Emmett Brady The following books will provide an optimal understanding of how one should study and organize the data and observations that comprise the social sciences.

A reader who masters these books will quickly grasp the complex, dynamic, nonlinear aspects of social science systems as they evolve through time. Risk, Uncertainty and Profit - Frank H. Knight 4. Schumpter 5. The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith 6. Risk, Ambiguity and Decision - Daniel Ellsberg 7. Hudson 8. Probability, Econometrics and Truth - Hugo A. Keuzenkamp 9. Landes The Laws of Thought - George Boole Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb Feb 02, Michele Boldrin rated it liked it.

A bit over-rated and a bit too much on the mythological side of the narrative, but certainly essential reading if one wants to know about detailed technological changes in the first periods of the Indust.

That "technological change" sprung up all so suddenly due to a bunch of not well defined irrational motives is a fantasy of the author that removes at least the previous years of European history but literary success has its prices : A bit over-rated and a bit too much on the mythological side of the narrative, but certainly essential reading if one wants to know about detailed technological changes in the first periods of the Indust.

That "technological change" sprung up all so suddenly due to a bunch of not well defined irrational motives is a fantasy of the author that removes at least the previous years of European history but literary success has its prices Jun 30, Guilherme Pimentel rated it really liked it. Very good on the idustrial revolution. Dec 31, Nicholas rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: people trying to understand the Industrial Revolution.

Landes' classic. Apr 30, Joshua rated it it was ok. The perfect straw-man. Diva rated it really liked it Sep 10, N rated it liked it Jun 05, Dean rated it it was amazing Mar 01, Martin rated it it was ok Oct 24, This includes even confirmed classics such as Utopia , that gave the genre its name in the 16th century. Stories, like history, are about human action, and the locus of all action is the individual. It is high time that their influence, which has already done harm enough, should be overthrown.

Hayek , Ecotopia is the most plausible utopia I have encountered, because it does not seek the perfection of humans or of nature. Ecotopian novels … exude a curious feeling of security, almost like 19th-century English novels: a sense, probably derived here from the stable-state notion, that the world is a decent and satisfactory place which will sustain us despite some difficulties.

Perhaps we are always bound to dream of fictional worlds as an antidote to our own. Perhaps this is why, to a society rent by social, political, and economic disturbances, nothing could be more romantic than an evenly rotating economy.

Interestingly, Quebec seceded from Canada in the early s, and Weston hints that parts of the Soviet Union will soon break away. At the time, the first prediction must have seemed like a much safer bet than the second, though subsequent history proved the opposite to be the case.

Studies literature at the University of Utah, and libertarian theory in his spare time. He tries to combine the two when he can. Prometheus Unbound. Hayek , Ecotopia is the most plausible utopia I have encountered, because it does not seek the perfection of humans or of nature. Another star added. So there are a lot of ways to look at Shelley's Prometheus Unbound: as a continuation of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, as its own closet drama, or as a framework for Shelley to write poetry on nature and classical mythology.

Unfortunately, in my opinion Prometheus Unbound fails no matter which of the three ways you look at it, and I'm actually left scratching my head at how badly Shelley messed up considering that he was handed such an interesting subject on a silver platter. Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound is a work with amazing potential, the only surviving play in a trilogy that functions as a fascinating introduction to the Prometheus myth.

Both Prometheus and Zeus are established as characters with depth, and their conflict is both nuanced and dramatic. It's impossible to say whether the potential of Prometheus Bound was fulfilled by Aeschylus's later plays, but I know for certain that said potential wasn't realized by Shelley. Instead of the fully developed characters of Prometheus Bound Shelley takes Prometheus and makes him a one-dimensional martyr, reassigning the pride that was evident in the Aeschylus version of Prometheus to Zeus.

Shelley's Prometheus has no flaws of any consequence, instead he's just a name that undergoes unjust suffering and whose eventual release heralds a new age of peace and prosperity.

He's the prophesied chosen one, a role which apparently Shelley doesn't think requires any further characterization. Zeus is also far less interesting here than in Prometheus Bound, as Shelley has made Zeus into a pure tyrant, with no reference to his recent rise to power and subsequent shift in behavior that made him an interesting character when crafted by Aeschylus, despite the fact that Zeus never appeared onstage in Prometheus Bound.

Even minor characters like Mercury are made less compelling by Shelley than the ancient source material he had to draw inspiration from. While Prometheus Bound was the beginning of what promised to be a play of both emotional and potentially moral complexity, Shelley's play is one of black-and-white morality and one-dimensional characters. Compared to Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound is banal and unimpressive. Looking at Prometheus Unbound independent of Prometheus Unbound it still fails to excite.

Shelley wrote this as a closet drama, meaning it was not intended to actually be performed, and I have to say that's an excellent decision because I can't imagine any way to stage and perform this play that wouldn't be mind-numbingly boring. All the flat characters only communicate through page long speeches, the actual action of the play occurs solely in the first act and the first few pages of the third, and the fourth act is so superfluous that Shelley didn't even originally include it as part of the play but instead tacked it on later.

The ancient tragedians knew how to get to the point, and even more contemporary playwrights to Shelley like Shakespeare knew the art of merging their exquisite language with dramatic and compelling plots. There is no evidence in Prometheus Unbound that Shelley possessed that ability, and the story of Prometheus isn't one that precludes dramatic tension by any means.

Shelley's four act play rambles on, brushing the key events out of the way as quickly as possible so as to fit in more passages of Earth and Asia and the Moon and other "characters" either despairing over the fate of Prometheus and the current state of the world, or in the second half of the play praising the changes that have occurred and the new state of things.

Jupiter Zeus literally appears for all of three pages. The Moon gets more lines than Jupiter does. In sum Prometheus Unbound, even if you aren't comparing it to other plays, is a poorly structured work that fails to be at all compelling, instead continually going off on tangents and focusing on minor occurrences while giving very little attention to major ones.

These failings are why I believe Prometheus Unbound should really be considered a framework for Shelley's poetry instead of as a drama of any sort, closet or otherwise. Seriously, even if Shelley was a complete fool he probably could have written a play with better structure than this if crafting an interesting play was his goal.

Instead, if his intention was to use the classical framework established by Aeschylus as a jumping off point for his poetry, then the structure of the play and the characters he chose to focus on makes far more sense.

Unfortunately, while more understandable, Prometheus Unbound isn't very good when considered as a poetry framework either. Shelley can write great poetry, no question, the go-to example that almost everyone is familiar with being Ozymandias, and other efforts by Shelley some included with Prometheus Unbound when it was first published are also impressive. In Prometheus Unbound there is little of Shelley's best on display when it comes to poetry.

For every character's speech that works well as a poem there are a dozen that seem mediocre poetry at best- and I'm probably being generous, as most lines don't even seem to meet the threshold of poetry but merely read as prolix prose.

Additionally, reading over a hundred pages of Shelley's second tier poems stapled together isn't the format to appreciate his poetic talents. That is to say, a story for men, if it skimps on either of the two, is more likely to skimp on character, while a story for women will shortchange the plot. The best stories, of course, are strong in both categories. Science fiction, being a more masculine genre — in fact the only genre of fiction whose readership is more male than female — has traditionally been solid on plot and hit or miss with the characters.

There are exceptions, as one would expect, and Philip K. The story takes place in what was the present day when the novel was written, , but in an alternate timeline where Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won World War II. The United States has been carved into puppet governments; Germany has sent astronauts to Mars, drained the Mediterranean for farmland and committed multiple genocides; Japan controls the west coast of North America, having become a cultural as well as political hegemon.

It is a marvelous setting, both in conception and in description. Whereas in most stories the setting serves as a place for the plot to take place, the reader here gets the sense that the plot is just something to have happen in the setting. The world and its characters are the point; what they do in the narrative has less importance.

This narrative, such as it is, consists of several storylines in the Pacific States of America and the Rocky Mountain States.

Each storyline has a principle character connected in some way, often unbeknownst to him or her, with the others. The connections are frequently tenuous and the separate stories never get around to merging with, affecting, and reinforcing one another in a satisfying manner, but as separate, open-ended short stories they do work well.

Dick has a knack for creating a compelling scene — composing with a patience, rhythm, sensitivity, and attention to detail one finds lacking in many story-driven works — and for putting interesting characters into them. Though in the big picture the story structure does not please as much as it might have, the various scenes along the way are of good quality, some of them superb.