Leonardo to the Internet: Technology
and Culture from the Renaissance to
the Present (Johns Hopkins Studies
in the History of Technology) by
Thomas J. Misa
Broad And Compelling Review Of Technology In History
The image of the lone inventor transforming society from the outside has a
strong hold on the publics imagination. In reality, though, technologies are
products of ongoing social and cultural processes. In Leonardo to the
Internet, historian Thomas J. Misa provides a sweeping comparative
history of the interrelationship between technology and society since the
Renaissance, revealing how technological innovations have been shaped
by the cultures in which they arose—and how such technologies have, in
turn, shaped these cultures. From the careers and contributions of
Renaissance court inventors Johann Gutenberg and Leonardo da Vinci to
beer brewing in industrial London to the telecommunication revolution of

the late twentieth century, Misa uses carefully chosen and engagingly told
case studies to develop his thesis. Over eight thematic chapters, Misa
provides detailed portraits of the inventors and users of technologies.
Beginning his narrative at the dawn of the modern era, Misa surveys the
intersections of technology, politics, and culture in the Renaissance court
system of Western Europe; the role of technology in Hollands commercial
expansion; the diverse paths to and through Britains industrial revolution;
the links among technology, imperialism, and trade in the nineteenth
century; and the application of scientific discoveries in chemistry and
physics to industry in Germany and the United States at the turn of the
twentieth century. Misa then examines the introduction of mass-produced
consumer goods and their impact on daily life and modernist sensibilities;
the rise of the military-industrial complex during World War II and the
technological innovations generated by the command-and-control
economies of the Cold War; and the emergence of a technology-oriented
global culture since the 1970s. The work concludes with a provocative
essay laying out the technological choices we face today and considering
their impact on the type of society we wish for the future. A masterful
analysis of the ways in which technology and culture have influenced each
other over five centuries, Leonardo to the Internet encourages students
and general readers alike to think both more widely and more deeply
about the invention, development, transfer, and adaptation of technologies
within Western civilization.
Personal Review: Leonardo to the Internet: Technology and
Culture from the Renaissance to the Present (Johns Hopkins
Studies in the History of Technology) by Thomas J. Misa
LEONARDO TO THE INTERNET takes a broad historic look at the
defining technologies of eight different eras between the 15th century and
today. The author, Thomas Misa, is a professor in the Department of
Humanities at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He looks at
the relationship between technology and the various cultures of these
periods and shows that "technology is not only a force for but also a
product of social and cultural change."
In the first chapter, "Technologies of the Court," he looks at the court
engineers, including Leonardo da Vinci, the invention of perspective in
painting, and the Gutenberg printing press to show how these technologies
were used, not for economic gain, but to support the royal courts and city-
states of the Renaissance era.
The second chapter is entitled "Techniques of Commerce" and looks at the
period from 1588 to 1740 when Dutch merchants amassed fortunes using
technologies like herring fishing boat factories, windmills, and fine textiles
manufacture and developed an international trade second to none. They
used their wealth to support fine artists and to speculate in tulip bulbs.
"Geographies of Industry" is the third chapter and it covers the period from
1740 to 1851, the time of the Industrial Revolution in England. Rather than

looking at the cities normally considered the homes of industry in this
period, Misa takes a close look at industry in London, using beer brewing
as his focus. He then compares London to Manchester's textiles industry
and Sheffield steel manufacture. He does this to create a much more
complex image of the Industrial Revolution, and to show that there were
many paths to industrialization in the period.
1840 to 1914 is the subject of "Instruments of Empire," the fourth chapter.
Here Misa looks at how British Imperialism and the technologies of
railroads, steamships, and telegraphy interacted to create a world-
spanning empire.
Chapter five, Science and Systems, covers a second industrial revolution
that took place between 1870 and 1930. Here the German science-based
chemical industry developed a synthetic-chemical empire based originally
on fabric dyes. Also science and technological research became an
integral part of industry, driving out the independent inventors of earlier
times. The author also looks to America's electric lighting struggle between
direct and alternating current systems. Out of these developments came
modern German companies like IG Farben, BASF, Bayer, and AGFA, as
well as the American firms of Westinghouse and General Electric. Misa
also looks at the beginning of university industrial partnerships with the
development of the MIT labs.
The first half of the 20th century is the focus of chapter six, "Materials of
Modernism." Here the Italian Futurists, the German Bauhaus, and the
Dutch Modernists take the modern materials of steel and glass to redefine
architecture and aesthetic theories.
"The Means of Destruction," chapter seven, looks at the relationship
between the military and technological innovation in the 20th century. Misa
calls World War II a "war of innovation" and looks closely at the atomic
programs on both sides of the war as an example of how this relationship
developed. The author shows that after the war this military-technology
relationship still held sway. He uses the examples of the development of
solid-state electronics and digital computers to illustrate this.
In chapter 8, "Toward a Global Culture," the author shows how
Globalization was the major trend in last 30 years of the 20th century. He
uses the development of the international standards that made the fax
machine an everyday commodity as a case study of how this happened.
Then he turns his attention to the world-wide food chain McDonald's to
show how culture and technology give and take together in globalization.
He then ends up with a discussion of the global Internet culture, but with a
nod back to the previous chapter as he shows the military influences that
developed the Internet.
He ends up with a summary chapter called "The Question of Technology"
where he discusses the dynamics between Science, Economics, Culture,

and Change. It is here that Misa points out that the relationship between
Technology and Society is a constant give and take. There is a sad note to
this summation as he states that he feels the attacks of September 11,
2001 signalled an end to this era. He states that the reactions to these
attacks do not fit a pattern of globalization, and goes on to say that the
"vision of a peaceful world, economically integrated and culturally
harmonious, knitted together by information technology, is dead." He looks
forward to a new era where reformers, social movements and groups of
citizens embrace technological solutions to shape a new future.
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