How Blind Is Love?: Simon Winchester's The Man Who Loved China

摘要

In SHOT we think a lot about storytelling. We aim to tell good stories about technology-good as in sound, engaging, and well-crafted, and good as in thoughtful, critical, and politically and ethically aware. Technology and Culture was launched fifty years ago as a deliberate challenge to what the founders of SHOT saw as an impoverished mode of storytelling that reinforced myths, perpetuated hierarchies, and ignored absences. Since then we SHOT members have told many new kinds of stories about technology. We reflect, individually and collectively, on paths taken and those still untrodden. As members of a discipline unusually committed to public engagement, we are adventurous in exploring new styles, formats, and media for disseminating our stories. We try to eschew intellectual snobbery and wholeheartedly celebrate good storytelling about technology in any form. Significantly, SHOT awards prizes not only for academic achievements, but also for books or exhibitions that successfully reach out to the general public. Alas, despite our impeccably populist goals, few of the books we publish make it to the best-seller list. Furthermore, long and hard though we have fought to challenge such pernicious myths, most people outside our field still think that technological innovation is synonymous with human progress, and that Western civilizations are the natural heartland of technical achievement.