Histories of Human Engineering: Tact and Technology – PDF

The dream of control over human habits is an old dream, shared by lots of cultures. In Derksen’s Histories of Human Engineering: Tact and Technology (PDF), this interesting account of the histories of human engineering explains how innovations of handling groups and people were established from the 19th century to today day, varying from brainwashing and mind control to Dale Carnegie’s art of handling individuals. Derksen exposes that typical to all of them is the continuous stress in between the desire to manage individuals’s habits and the resistance this provokes. Thus to affect other individuals effectively, technology needed to be integrated with tact: with a subtle tip, with an individual touch, or with straight-out deceptiveness, adjustments are made undetectable or tasty. Combining mental history and theory with insights from technology and science research studies and rhetorical scholarship, Derksen provides a fresh point of view on human engineering that will attract those thinking about the history of technology and the history of psychology.