'A book I can use. I can take it in two hands and bash it over the heads of every techno-nerd, computer geek and neophiliac futurologist I meet.’ Simon Jenkins, The Guardian

David Edgerton, author of The Shock of the Old, makes an appearance at Watershed in the Festival of Ideas on 22 May at 6pm, to challenge the idea that we live in an era of ever increasing change, interweaving political, economic and cultural history to show what it means to think critically about technology and its importance.

Whereas standard histories of technology give tired old accounts of the usual inventions – planes, bombs – The Shock of the Old is based on a different idea. Its thrust is that for the full picture of the history of technology we need to know not about what a few people invented, but about what everyday people used – and when they actually used things, if it was a long time after invention. It therefore reassesses the significance of, for example, the Pill and IT, and shows the continued importance of technology such as corrugated iron and sewing machines.

Read more at 'What Else Is New? How uses, not innovations, drive human technology', Steven Shapin for the New Yorker.