This collection explores how technologies become forms of power, how people embed their authority in technological systems, and how the machines and the knowledge that make up technical systems strengthen or reshape social, political, and cultural power.

The authors suggest ways in which a more nuanced investigation of technology's complex history can enrich our understanding of the changing meanings of modernity.

They consider the relationship among the state, expertise, and authority; the construction of national identity; changes in the structure and distribution of labor; political ideology and industrial development; and political practices during the Cold War.