Professional Documents
Culture Documents
HS 101
Instructor Information
Sreekumar Jayadevan
Room 210, IIT Ropar
sreekumar@iitrpr.ac.in
1881-242187
The best way to reach me is via email
Course Structure
Credits: 1.5
Contact Hours: 21 × 50 Minutes
(Including Tutorials)
Quizzes/Assignments/Homeworks: 20%
Midsemester Examination: 40%
Final Examination: 40%
Attendance
“Technology”
What comes to your mind when you
see this word?
“History”
Why study History of Technology?
Example
Ford KA
Dodge Ram Rumble Bee Pickup
Dreirad Tempo
VW Beetle
VW Beetle
Learning History of Technology
• Is about the principles which drive technology
• Is human preferences and tastes
• Is about the heuristic principles in our
technological history
• Is about learning why a technology failed in
our history and the effect it leaves on us
Learning History of Technology
• Is not about past information
• Is about inferring the contexts of what ‘should
be’ from ‘what was’
• Is not about individuals and inventions
• Is about learning the political, social and
philosophical aspects of an era and analyze
where we are heading to
Benjamin Franklin’s Bifocals 1785
Bernard Maitenaz’s Progressive
Multifocals (1953)
A Few Lessons
Maitenaz’s lens is better/Worse than
Franklin’s.
Necessity Need
Two Contexts
The post
The mobile phone
Technology creates techno-social
systems
• Large data oriented networks like airports where
id cards are to be carried, a particular behavior is
expected from everyone part of the system.
Techno-social order
Discipline and power
Hidden implications
Bruce Sterling’s Levels of Human-
World interaction
• Radiofrequency id tags.
• Unique information loaded chips which are
traceable.
Modernism
Modernism (1914)
4) priority to function
5) mass production and mass market
Modernism
• sans-serif lettering
• Abstract painting
Example: Sitting on Air
Marcel Breuer (1928)
Example- Sitting on air Osko-
Deichmann (2009)
Sitting on air
• http://www.vam.ac.uk/
PRE MODERNISM
(late 1740s)
MODERNISM
(Early 1900s)
Victorian door knob
Gropius’ door knob
Form Versus Function
• Louis Sullivan (Architecture)
The Bauhaus
COMPARISON
PRE MODERN MODERNISM
Decorative Non-Decorative
More Less
Ornament in Form Function
Lineage to History Dissent to History
Walter Gropius (1883-1969)
Faguswerk in Alfeld-an-der-Leine-
1914
Diesel Railway Locomotive car for
Russian rail road-1912
The Bauhaus
The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city
of Weimar by German architect Walter
Gropius (1883–1969)
• IKEA
• Volkswagen factory in Dresden
• Riverside Plaza, Minneapolis
Modernism- Consequences
• Eurocentrism
• Logocentrism
• Androcentrism
Reactions and frustrations
• Postmodernism- “Anything”
For example: Aesthetic, Fashion, Cultural etc.
Studio Alchymia- The soul of
Postmodernism
“Representing alchemy and magic”
REASON Vs Emotion
×
Ettore Sottsass