Synopses & Reviews
In 1801, the first complete mastodon skeleton was excavated in the Hudson River Valley, marking the climax of a century-long debate in America and Europe over the identity of a mysterious creature known as the American Incognitum. Long before the dinosaurs were discovered and the notion of geological time acquired currency, many citizens of the new republic believed this mythical beast to be a ferocious carnivore, capable of crushing deer and elk in its "monstrous grinders." During the American Revolution, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson avidly collected its bones; for the founding fathers, its massive jaws symbolized the violence of the natural world and the emerging nation's own dreams of conquest.
Paul Semonin's lively history of this icon of American nationalism focuses on the link between patriotism and prehistoric nature. From the first fist-sized tooth found in 1705, which Puritan clergyman claimed was evidence of human giants, to the scientific racialism associated with the discovery of extinct species, Semonin traces the evangelical beliefs, Enlightenment thought, and Indian myths which led the founding fathers to view this prehistoric monster as a symbol of nationhood.
Semonin also sees the mystery of the mastodon in early America as a cautionary tale about the first flowering of our narcissistic fascination with a prehistoric nature ruled by ferocious carnivores. As such, American Monster offers fresh insights into the genesis of the ongoing fascination with dinosaurs.
Review
"The definitive study of the first unofficial totem animal of United States culture. Semonin's authoritative treatment of the 'American incognitum' or mastadon . . . is engagingly written and richly detailed. This book shows once again why history is stranger than fiction." -W. J. T. Mitchell,University of Chicago
Review
“One part palm reader and one part politico, Streeter makes total sense of the Internet: its 60s roots, its 90s ethos, and why it works and feels the way it does today. Whether or not you remember firsthand what a long strange trip it's been, The Net Effect will persuade you with its lucid rendering of the shared experiences, strange bedfellows, and stealth mythologies that have shaped what it means to be online.”
-Lisa Gitelman,NYU, and author of Always, Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture
Review
“‘We are romantics even, and perhaps especially, in the face of high technologies, writes Thomas Streeter. In his profound and illuminating analysis of the interactions between technology and desire, Streeter shows how conflicting visions of the internet have not so much reflected the pre-given triumph of a new technology as shaped the possibilities and limitations of who we are and who we might become.”
-Peter Stallybrass,University of Pennsylvania
Review
-S.A. Patton,Choice Magazine
Review
"The Net Effect is an excellent resource for anyone reseraching the influence of society on technology." -CHOICE,
Synopsis
Fresh insights into the ongoing fascination with dinosaurs and their place in 19th century American nationalism
In 1801, the first complete mastodon skeleton was excavated in the Hudson River Valley, marking the climax of a century-long debate in America and Europe over the identity of a mysterious creature known as the American Incognitum. Long before the dinosaurs were discovered and the notion of geological time acquired currency, many citizens of the new republic believed this mythical beast to be a ferocious carnivore, capable of crushing deer and elk in its monstrous grinders. During the American Revolution, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson avidly collected its bones; for the founding fathers, its massive jaws symbolized the violence of the natural world and the emerging nation's own dreams of conquest.
Paul Semonin's lively history of this icon of American nationalism focuses on the link between patriotism and prehistoric nature. From the first fist-sized tooth found in 1705, which Puritan clergyman claimed was evidence of human giants, to the scientific racialism associated with the discovery of extinct species, Semonin traces the evangelical beliefs, Enlightenment thought, and Indian myths which led the founding fathers to view this prehistoric monster as a symbol of nationhood.
Semonin also sees the mystery of the mastodon in early America as a cautionary tale about the first flowering of our narcissistic fascination with a prehistoric nature ruled by ferocious carnivores. As such, American Monster offers fresh insights into the genesis of the ongoing fascination with dinosaurs.
Synopsis
This book about America's romance with computer communication looks at the internet, not as harbinger of the future or the next big thing, but as an expression of the times. Streeter demonstrates that our ideas about what connected computers are for have been in constant flux since their invention. In the 1950s they were imagined as the means for fighting nuclear wars, in the 1960s as systems for bringing mathematical certainty to the messy complexity of social life, in the 1970s as countercultural playgrounds, in the 1980s as an icon for what's good about free markets, in the 1990s as a new frontier to be conquered and, by the late 1990s, as the transcendence of markets in an anarchist open source utopia.
The Net Effect teases out how culture has influenced the construction of the internet and how the structure of the internet has played a role in cultures of social and political thought. It argues that the internet's real and imagined anarchic qualities are not a product of the technology alone, but of the historical peculiarities of how it emerged and was embraced. Finding several different traditions at work in the development of the internet—most uniquely, romanticism—Streeter demonstrates how the creation of technology is shot through with profoundly cultural forces—with the deep weight of the remembered past, and the pressures of shared passions made articulate.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 447-462) and index.
About the Author
Paul Semonin is a cultural historian and graphic artist. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Oregon. He lives in Eugene, Oregon and occasionally teaches history at Linfield College and Oregon State University.