Transforming the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations and Their Consequences pdf

瓦茨拉夫微笑 目前是加拿大温尼伯曼尼托巴大学环境学院的特聘教授。他在布拉格卡罗林大学自然科学学院和宾夕法尼亚州立大学地球与矿物科学学院完成了研究生学习。他的跨学科研究兴趣涵盖能源、环境、食品、人口、经济、历史和公共政策研究等广泛领域，他还将这些方法应用于中国的能源、食品和环境事务。

他是加拿大皇家学会（科学院）的会员，也是第一位获得美国科学促进会公众对科学技术理解奖的非美国人。他在美国、加拿大、欧洲、亚洲和非洲的 250 多个会议和研讨会上受邀演讲，在北美、欧洲和东亚的多所大学讲学，并在美国、欧盟和许多国家担任顾问。国际机构。他的妻子伊娃是一名医生，他的儿子大卫是一名有机合成化学家。

Transforming the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations and Their Consequences pdf 瓦茨拉夫微笑

This inquiry into the technical advances that shaped the 20th century follows the evolutions of all the principal innovations introduced before 1913 (as detailed in the first volume) as well as the origins and elaborations of all fundamental 20th century advances. The history of the 20th century is rooted in amazing technical advances of 1871-1913, but the century differs so remarkably from the preceding 100 years because of several unprecedented combinations. The 20th century had followed on the path defined during the half century preceding the beginning of World War I, but it has traveled along that path at a very different pace, with different ambitions and intents. The new century's developments elevated both the magnitudes of output and the spatial distribution of mass industrial production and to new and, in many ways, virtually incomparable levels. Twentieth century science and engineering conquered and perfected a number of fundamental challenges which remained unresolved before 1913, and which to many critics appeared insoluble. This book is organized in topical chapters dealing with electricity, engines, materials and syntheses, and information techniques. It concludes with an extended examination of contradictory consequences of our admirable technical progress by confronting the accomplishments and perils of systems that brought liberating simplicity as well as overwhelming complexity, that created unprecedented affluence and equally unprecedented economic gaps, that greatly increased both our security and fears as well as our understanding and ignorance, and that provided the means for greater protection of the biosphere while concurrently undermining some of the key biophysical foundations of life on Earth.
Transforming the Twentieth Century will offer a wide-ranging interdisciplinary appreciation of the undeniable technical foundations of the modern world as well as a multitude of welcome and worrisome consequences of these developments. It will combine scientific rigor with accessible writing, thoroughly illustrated by a large number of appropriate images that will include historical photographs and revealing charts of long-term trends.