Democracy and Technology

Democracy and Technology received the Don K. Price Award of the American Political Science Association, honoring “the year’s best book in science, technology and politics.”

Choix Technologiques, Choix de Societé is the edited and augmented French translation of Democracy and Technology.

Read Chapter 1, “Spanish Waters, Amish Farming: Two Parables of Modernity?

Praise for Democracy and Technology:

Remarkably ambitious, superbly accessible, and urgently needed—a gold mine of fundamental insights and suggestive provocations. . . . This is the most far-reaching work I have seen on the political nature of technological change.” ~ Professor David F. Noble, author of The Religion of Technology and Forces of Production

Mr. Sclove is refreshing in the way he rejects ideas so nearly universally held that most people have never thought to question them.” ~ New York Times Book Review

Tightly reasoned and far-ranging in examples and erudition . . . cogent and illuminating . . .  seminal. . . . Sclove writes in the hallowed and constructive tradition of Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire, Lewis Mumford, and E. F. Schumacher.” ~ Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science

A welcome addition to an essential debate. . . . This book provides a provocative and thorough analysis of the challenges facing us on the threshold of the 21st Century.” ~ U.S.  Congressman George E. Brown, Jr., Chairman, House Science Committee

Three recent books renew my hopes for a robust dialog about technology and its impacts . . . . Democracy and Technology is the most ambitious in scope.” ~ Wired Magazine

“Sclove’s treatment . . . is as creative and artful as the society that he would like to see, filled with empirical evidence to show, in detail, that the possibilities as well as the problems are real.” ~ Ethics

Compelling and comprehensive. . . . The argument is lucid, the sensibilities are humane, and the conclusions are important.” ~ Joshua Cohen, Professor of Ethics in Society, Stanford University, and Co-Editor of the Boston Review

This book will be an essential tool to strengthen democratic public problem-solving. Sclove gives us a compelling moral argument and a practical guide to shaping our future. Bravo!” ~ Frances Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet and Democracy’s Edge

Democracy and technology, and the way these two institutions affect each other, is perhaps the most pressing problem of the coming decade. Neither Luddite nor Technophile . . . Sclove directs our attention to solutions that might actually work.” ~ Howard Rheingold, author of Virtual Community

An important book, one for which the community of science and technology studies scholars has been waiting. In clear prose, using numerous salient examples, Richard Sclove provides a philosophic and practical foundation for participatory technology. I am looking forward to using this book in several of my courses.” ~ Professor Ruth Schwartz Cowan, author of More Work for Mother and President, Society for the History of Technology