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 viii Contents

10 Technology-Mediated Social Relationships 190

Learning Objectives 190
Introduction 190
Early Beginnings of Mediated Communication 191
North America Calling: The Impact of the Telephone on Social
Relationships 193
Penetration of Mediated Communication: The Impact of the Internet
on Social Relationships 195
How Has Technology Affected Our Relationships? 197
Conclusions 209
Questions for Critical Thought 210
Suggested Readings 211
Online Resources 211

11 The Surveillance Society 212

Learning Objectives 212
Introduction 212
Defining and Understanding Surveillance 213
Foucault’s Analysis of Power Relations in Society 217
Technology’s Role in the New Surveillance 222
Counter-surveillance as a Means of Personal Resistance 230
Conclusions 234
Questions for Critical Thought 235
Suggested Readings 235
Online Resources 235

12 Ethical Dimensions of Technology 237

Learning Objectives 237
Introduction 237
The Book’s Three Central Themes 238
Ethical and Moral Dimensions of Our Technological Society 241
Electronic Waste 249
A Society of Overload 251
Conclusions 255
Questions for Critical Thought 256
Suggested Readings 256
Online Resources 257

Glossary 258
Notes 281
References 283
Index 303

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 Preface
A key motivation for writing Technology and Society was a mixed sense of
euphoria and concern. As I continued to adopt various technologies and to
test new applications on the Web, I felt excited to be witnessing a time of
technological transformation—the era of digital tools and apps. News stories
on Reddit and the Huffington Post featured new apps, and my Twitter feed
seemed to increase in volume daily. I often had the sense that things were
happening faster and that if I was not tethered to my various devices, I could
miss out on important events, news, or opportunities. This anxiety has been
referred to as FOMO, the fear of missing out. How could I best organize my
day and my technology habits to keep up with this ever-increasing flow of
information? Harvey referred to this fundamental change in lifestyle as a
time–space compression in his 1989 book The Condition of Postmodernity,
which describes, among other things, an acceleration of social and cap-
italist dynamics resulting from digital communication. Key questions that
emerged for me included: What does the time–space compression consist
of? What are its social implications? And how can I keep up with transform-
ative changes resulting in an increase of messages, the speedy circulation of
news stories, and new social norms around communication?
There is no doubt that we have witnessed an unprecedented prolifera-
tion of social media tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest.
The Pew Research Center found that Americans spend more time on social
media than on any other Internet activity, with 73 per cent of adults online
using at least one social networking site (SNS), and as many as 42 per
cent using more than one. Social media adoption and use has become an
important part of the presentation of the self, of connecting with friends and
family, and of keeping up with the news and with world events, work, and
everyday life. Even traditional institutions and organizations have made the
move toward embracing digital technologies; for instance, the majority of
mainstream media outlets have adopted at least one social media tool.
The purpose of this book, then, is to slow down and step back for a
moment to make technology the object of sociological inquiry and to try to
uncover the intricacies of our socio-technical existence. By taking a socio-
technical perspective, the book makes readers aware of the pervasiveness of
technology in our everyday lives and encourages an understanding of how
technology interacts with and is embodied in society. Technology is both
the driving force behind societal change as well as the output of our techno-
logical imagination. It is this dichotomy that we want to present. The focus
of the book is on the high dependence on all things technological, combined
with the problems, social issues, and socio-political realm in which these

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 x Preface

technologies are embedded. As Marshall McLuhan so eloquently pointed

out, technology is not neutral. It affects our society and we need to be able
to discuss and scrutinize these effects. This book provides the necessary
background to start such an analysis by defining the parameters around
technology.
The book as a whole has three goals. The first is to examine how technol-
ogy and society intersect. The book investigates how technological change
is interlinked with inequality, power, and social networks. It is about con-
necting issues of relevance at both local and global, micro and macro lev-
els. In exploring these connections, this book raises and attempts to answer
a number of central questions: How is technology leading toward social
change? What is the nature of this social change? Who is being affected
by the technologies? Are various social groups being affected differently?
How are people using the technologies in different regions? Does the global
digital divide continue to exist?
The book’s second goal is to draw on readers’ own experiences as a
means to make sense of the link between technology and society. What is
unique about this book is its focus on experiential learning, which empha-
sizes gaining meaning from direct experience. Aristotle was among the
first to recognize the value of experience in gaining knowledge: “For the
things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing” (Bynum &
Porter, 2006). The book serves as a bridge, then, between abstract, theor-
etical thinking and real-life events and experiences. Throughout the book,
on-the-ground examples are utilized to demonstrate the relevance of con-
cepts and ideas. These real-life examples also demonstrate the relevance of
studying technology in its specific social context, be it historical, geographic,
regional, linguistic, age-based, or ethnic. Technology is about context. To
understand better the contextual nature of technology, the book strongly
encourages students to bring their personal experiences and voices to bear
on the material. This helps to put the concepts and theories in perspective
and give them meaning, immediacy, and relevance.
The final goal of the book is to encourage curiosity and to find out more
about technologies. The book should give readers an urge to do something
about the material: share it, post it, comment on it, and make a difference
in the world. Technology has become such an intrinsic part of our everyday
lives in the West that we need to care about these social problems and the
questions that open from the critical analysis of text, theory, and experience.
What is difficult about any study of technology is to step back and look
at technology as neutral, critical observers. But doing so allows us to exam-
ine technology in many different ways: technology as a technical device, as
a social force, as an agent for warfare, as a tool for health care, as a device

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 Preface xi

for fun, or as a force behind job losses and deskilling. Can we actually step
back as neutral observers? It is hard to imagine a world without technology.
Indeed, technology has been a part of human existence since the Stone Age,
when humans used stones, bones, and sticks as tools for survival. But study-
ing technology can help us become more aware of its role in our personal
lives, in the lives of other social groups and their struggles, and in our society
as a whole. Moreover, systematic analysis of design, implementation, and
use allow us to develop theories of the intersection of technology and society.
This type of analysis provides us with necessary background knowledge and
tools to embark on social, socio-political, and cultural studies of our own
socio-technical existence. As a result, this book provides a solid understand-
ing of technology’s role in society and gives students the tools they need to
embark on a critical and in-depth inquiry of our technological society.

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 Overview of the Book
Technology and Society: Social Networks, Power, and Inequality is aimed at stu-
dents in undergraduate courses on technology in a range of disciplines in the
social sciences (in particular, sociology and anthropology), arts and human-
ities, communication studies, and information science. This book is also
appropriate for management or business classes because of its focus on tech-
nology design, innovation, and labour in Web 2.0 contexts. The book does
not require any previous knowledge of technology or statistics. Theories and
concepts are explained in great depth, and the glossary provides definitions
of new and specific terminology. Technology and Society relies on current
interdisciplinary work from sociology, the history of technology, science and
technology studies (STS), communications, and related fields.
The chapters are organized to help students understand and learn the
material. Each chapter starts with a set of learning goals, continues with a
general overview or introduction to guide the readers through the material,
and ends with a conclusion, a set of study questions, and further readings.
What distinguishes the book from other similar works is its focus on con-
temporary examples and case studies. The book brings concepts and theor-
ies to life by showing how they relate to current discussions in the media and
in academia with regard to policy, changes in the law, and pressing critical
issues of our digital age. Through its comprehensive list of further read-
ings and additional/supplemental Web content, the book encourages readers
to seek out further resources, to obtain additional current information, to
deepen their knowledge of topics, and to explore new topics of their own
interest. Next, we present a short overview of each chapter to give readers an
idea of some of the topics covered.

Chapter 1: The Technological Society

Chapter 1 investigates the contentious question of how to best define tech-
nology. The chapter outlines and critically discusses several approaches.
Considering the depth and pervasiveness of technology in our society, this
introductory chapter stresses the relevance of studying the intersection of
technology and society—what is often referred to as the socio-technical
perspective. The chapter includes a discussion of how technologies lead to
large-scale, widespread social change and issues, such as social and economic
inequality. The key argument is that social change occurs not as a result of
technology alone but as a blending of micro-, meso-, and macro-level pro-
cesses. In addition to established approaches to understanding technology,

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 Overview of the Book xiii

the chapter also covers two of the main contemporary perspectives surround-
ing the use of technology in modern society. The first is simulation, which
is geared toward the development of tools that can resemble or outperform
human faculties. The second perspective is augmentation, which attempts to
integrate machines and humans into new hybrid actors with added capabil-
ities. Both of these perspectives highlight the many points of intersection
of the human and the technological, raising important questions about the
ethical, moral, and societal implications of endeavours such as augmentation
and simulation.

Chapter 2: Technology in Society: A Historical Overview

To comprehend fully how technology and society intersect in our modern
society, we need to first take a look at the history of technology. The aim
of Chapter 2 is to provide a broad overview of this history by tracing the
roots of technological development, discussing key periods of technological
innovation, and outlining our present-day high-tech society. Technology
is the strongest force of change in society and, as such, its development,
transformation, and diffusion directly shape many aspects of society, such
as work, community, and social relationships. We examine these techno-
logical transformations over time and demonstrate the impacts they have
had on past societies. This chapter further attempts to link technologies,
inventors, and historical moments to provide an in-depth examination of
the socio-political context in which technologies emerge. Chapter 2 shows
how technology is ingrained in society, affecting all aspects of our lives, and
outlines the merits of taking a sociological perspective when studying the
history of technology.

Chapter 3: Theoretical Perspectives on Technology

Chapter 3 covers a plurality of theoretical perspectives, which seek to shed
light on the nature of the relationship between technology and society, as well
as on those elements of society most affected by technology. First, the chap-
ter contrasts the utopian and dystopian approaches, which each highlight a
different side of how technology transforms society. Second, Chapter 3 also
reviews the key premises underlying the theories of technological and social
determinism and discusses their strengths and weaknesses. Third, the chap-
ter introduces the field of STs as an alternative framework, which stresses
that artifacts are socially constructed, mirroring the society that produces
them. Then the chapter reviews the two most prominent approaches of STS:
social construction of technology (SCOT) and actor network theory (ANT).

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 xiv Overview of the Book

Chapter 4: Gendered Technology

The book would not be complete without a critical engagement with the
topic of gender and technology. Often gender is ignored in the design,
adoption, and use of tools and apps, despite the fact that an analysis of
gender provides rich insights into fundamental differences between men
and women and how they approach technology. The chapter looks at
historical and contemporary theoretical and methodological approaches
to the study and critique of gendered technologies. Of particular interest
is the relation between household technologies and physical and mental
labour. The chapter aims to discern the similarities and differences in
how men and women adopt and use digital technologies. This analysis
reveals that there is a gap between men and women in terms of their
digital skills, perceptions of competency, and uptake of digital tools.
Based on these differences, the chapter goes on to examine the role of
women in the IT industry and provides an overview of current interven-
tions, such as Ladies Learning Code, aimed at increasing gender equal-
ity in this field. Finally, the chapter investigates how the gendered body
becomes reintegrated into the digital world in the form of images, dis-
course, media depictions, and user-generated content.

Chapter 5: Techno-Social Designing

The topic of Chapter 5 is the impact of social factors on the design of tech-
nology. Users of technology are often oblivious to the complexity under-
lying technological design because not much knowledge is available on
how this process unfolds. The aim of this chapter, then, is to uncover these
often hidden creative processes by examining developers’ visions and the
challenges experienced in research and development (R&D), including the
pressures that exist in R&D teams and the ways that innovation occurs in
these teams. As well, Chapter 5 introduces the term technopole to describe
specialized cities dedicated solely to technological innovation. Silicon
Valley is presented as an example of a technopole that combines a highly
educated workforce with military and economic interests. The chapter
also examines in more detail the inner workings and the outer pressures of
software development, which is one type of R&D that has come to occupy
a central role in the world economy.

Chapter 6: The Adoption and Diffusion of Technological

Innovations
Chapter 6 investigates how technology diffuses in society. The chapter pro-
vides an overview of the key concepts, theories, and research findings in

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 Overview of the Book xv

the diffusion of innovations literature and discusses them in relation to the

diffusion of specific technologies, such as water boiling, the QWERTY key-
board, and the iPhone. The aim of the chapter is to examine key adopter
groups, how they differ, and their salient characteristics. Everett Rogers’s
classic model of the diffusion of innovations, the stages of the innovation-
decision process, and his categorization of adopter groups are elucidated in
great detail to provide students with the necessary foundations in the field
of diffusion of innovations. As part of this overview, change agents and early
adopters are discussed as being among those who play active roles in promo-
ting and diffusing new tools.

Chapter 7: The Labour of Technology

The complex interrelation between technology and labour is the topic of this
chapter. The focus here is on the changes in the nature, context, and struc-
ture of work that result from new technologies and the associated power
imbalances. Historically, these changes occurred as early as the Industrial
Revolution when machines replaced skilled workers, creating social
upheaval, dissatisfaction, and unrest. We use the historical context to help
readers better grasp current trends in how Web 2.0 technologies facilitate
new forms of production that are based on principles of collaboration, shar-
ing, and open source. We discuss key concepts of the Web 2.0 mode of work,
including prosumer, produsage, and perpetual beta. Wikipedia and Facebook
are used as examples to illustrate current trends in how users become pro-
ducers of content. Most users would not consider this work, rather, they
view it as art, pleasure, fun, or leisure time. But these new forms of work do
have consequences for the new economy and for labour relations. The main
point of this chapter is that technology is not neutral but, rather, becomes an
active force that changes the nature of work itself, working conditions, and
the structure of society as a whole.

Chapter 8: Technology and Inequality

In Chapter 8 issues specifically linked to digital inequality are covered to
provide an overview of the social, economic, and cultural consequences that
result from a lack of access to the Internet. The chapter covers the histor-
ical developments of the digital divide concept, examines the complexity of
its measurement, and considers its relevance to policy in Canada and the
United States. A key argument is that inequalities in the use of digital tech-
nologies reflect not only problems associated with access to networked com-
puters but also differences in skill level among users. Another central term
covered in this chapter is the global digital divide, which describes the gap in
access to the Internet that exists between developing and developed nations.

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 xvi Overview of the Book

Many developing nations continue to falter in their efforts to become digital,

having to overcome numerous barriers of access, skill, and infrastructure.
China is discussed as a prime example of a newly industrializing nation
that has struggled to join the information society and in the process has
developed an ambivalent relationship with the Internet.

Chapter 9: Community in the Network Society

Chapter 9 examines how the notion of community has changed as a result
of the introduction of new technologies in society. The chapter starts with
a brief overview of Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft as two of the most central
concepts in the study of the structure of society. What follows is a critical
examination of the debate about how industrialization, urbanization, and
globalization have affected community. The community-lost, community-
saved, and community-liberated perspectives are reviewed to contrast com-
peting theories on the nature of these changes. The chapter also considers
the recent concerns expressed about the impact of the Internet on the pat-
terning of social relationships and presents various competing perspectives.
Chapter 9 concludes with a discussion of how information and communica-
tion technologies have affected the public sphere. As part of this discussion,
we take an in-depth look at the events that unfolded in Egypt in February of
2011 and analyze the role of social media in the protests.

Chapter 10: Technology-Mediated Social Relationships

In Chapter 10, we briefly outline the early beginnings of mediated communi-
cation and address how they impact society. Then, we review recent trends
in how people form and maintain personal connections via the Internet.
While most discourse focuses on the benefits of mediated communication,
scholars have also warned about the potential negative effects on people’s
social life. Can personal relations maintained online provide as much social
support as those maintained in person? The chapter then focuses on how
social media have redefined our notion of friendship and the implications
of these changes for community and social networking. What follows is
an analysis of romance 2.0, investigating how people form and terminate
romantic relations by using social media. The chapter ends with an explora-
tion of the concept of virtual mourning and how people renegotiate online
the meaning of death. To explore this new concept in depth, we examine the
unprecedented online response to Michael Jackson’s death and the support-
ive online community that formed around Canadian Eva Markvoort during
her struggles with cystic fibrosis.

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 Overview of the Book xvii

Chapter 11: The Surveillance Society

The topic of Chapter 11 is surveillance and how it has become a central
concern of our digital age. The goal of this chapter is to define the multi-
faceted term by contrasting different perspectives available in the literature.
The chapter then provides an overview of the concept and architecture of
the Panopticon and its means of exerting control and imposing disciplinary
action. The chapter discusses the new modes of surveillance made possible
by recent technological developments, which show how technologies have
changed not only the practices of surveillance but also the very nature of
surveillance, reducing individuals’ privacy rights to a large extent. We end
the chapter with a review of innovative methods of counter-surveillance that
aim at increasing awareness of the pervasiveness of surveillance in our soci-
ety and provide means for personal resistance.

Chapter 12: Ethical Dimensions of Technology

The goal of the final chapter is to summarize the three key themes that run
through the book. The first theme stresses the need to take a socio-technical
perspective that allows for an in-depth examination of the social context
of technology design, use, and implementation. The second theme dem-
onstrates how innovation is associated with economics and as a result has
consequences for our understanding of inequality and power relations. The
last theme shows the many ways in which technological developments lead
toward social change, impacting community, social networks, and social
relations. The final chapter also embarks on a critical examination of the
ethical and moral dimensions of humans’ engagement with technology. The
following themes are explored: the neutrality of technology, technology as
human destiny, and technology as progress. Through this discussion, the
chapter emphasizes the unexpected consequences of technology with which
society must, ultimately, come to terms.

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 Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Lorne Tepperman and Susan McDaniel for giving
me the opportunity to contribute to the Themes in Canadian Sociology ser-
ies; this has been a great honour and privilege. I would also like to thank
Meg Patterson and Darcey Pepper at Oxford University Press for all of their
advice and encouragement during the writing and editing of the book. The
manuscript has benefited enormously from the constructive and helpful
feedback received from Barry Wellman at the University of Toronto and
Laurie Forbes at Lakehead University. I thank them for their time and their
commitment to high standards in scholarship. This project would not have
come to fruition without the love of my family—the Mortons and the Quans.
They bring many of the examples in the book to life with their devotion to
and skepticism of all things technological. I would also like to express my
indebtedness to my research assistants—Becky Blue, Gary Nicholas Collins,
Michael Haight, Kim Martin, and Jonathas Mello—who helped with litera-
ture reviews, drafts, editing, graphics, and humour. Chapter 1 greatly bene-
fited from discussions with my colleague Victoria L. Rubin, whose sharp
insights helped me better organize the chapter. Chapter 7 benefited from
discussions with Brian Brown, while Chapter 11 received input from sur-
veillance expert John Reed.

Anabel Quan-Haase
July 2015

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 Abbreviations
AI artificial intelligence
ANT actor network theory
CANARIE The Canadian Advanced Network and Research for Industry
and Education
CAP Community Access Program
CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
CCTV closed circuit television
CF cystic fibrosis
CGE Compagnie Générale d’Electricité
CNNIC China Internet Network Information Centre
DD digital divide
DIY do-it-yourself
EDF Électricité de France
FCC Federal Communications Commission
GDP gross domestic product
GERD gross domestic product expenditure on research and development
GSS General Social Survey
ICTs information and communication technologies
ICT4D information and communication technologies for development
IM instant message
ISP Internet service provider
IT information technology
ITU International Telecommunications Union
KME Knowledge Management Enterprises
LAN local area network
NPOV neutral point of view
NRA National Rifle Association of America
NTIA National Telecommunications and Information Administration
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OLPC One Laptop per Child
PC personal computer
R&D research and development
ROI return on investment
SCOT social construction of technology
SNSs social network sites
STS science and technology studies
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
WELL Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link
WSIS World Summit on the Information Society

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 1 The Technological Society

Learning Objectives
 to understand the challenges in defining and studying technology;
 to obtain an overview of historical definitions of technology and their strengths and
limitations;
 to learn about the complexity of defining technology as not merely material substance,
but rather as a complex assemblage;
 to examine contemporary perspectives of technology that blur the boundaries of
machine and human elements.

Introduction
This introductory chapter highlights the relevance of investigating the inter-
section of technology and society. It is easy to dismiss technology as a mere
object, without giving much consideration to how it is woven into our every-
day lives. Technology provides a means for us, its users, to get things done.
Without giving it much thought, we leave our homes every morning with
our cellphones (often more than one), laptops, MP3 players (such as iPods),
headphones, watches, and other gadgets. Only when our technology fails
us do we suddenly realize the depth of our dependence on that technology.
There is frustration and sometimes even a sense of panic when we forget
our cellphone at home (or worse, when we lose it!). Our cellphones’ digital
address books have become an extension of our memory, storing hundreds
of names, phone numbers, and email addresses. Facebook pictures, posts,
and updates are digital footprints of our e-identity, our digital selves. This
ubiquity of and dependence on technology raises questions about its use as a
means to enhance, complement, or even substitute human faculties and the
ethical implications this close interlink has for our society. As long as tech-
nology works smoothly, it is simply part of our daily life, part of what keeps
society as a whole functioning. But when it fails, or when its use crosses eth-
ical boundaries, we come to realize that it is actually another “actor,” even
if non-human, in a complex web of relations. To demonstrate this balance
between ethics and technological use, this chapter presents and discusses

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 2 Technology and Society

the Facebook experiment on social contagion as an example of an ethical

dilemma not only for users but also for Facebook developers.
The aim of this initial chapter is to introduce readers to the topic of
technology by critically discussing and comparing its various definitions. In
addition, the chapter introduces and contrasts two perspectives of technol-
ogy that define our current times. The first is simulation, which is geared
toward the development of tools that can resemble or outperform human
faculties. The second perspective is augmentation, which attempts to inte-
grate machines and humans into new hybrid actors with added capabilities.
Both of these perspectives highlight the many points of intersection of the
human and the technological, raising important questions about the ethical,
moral, and societal implications of endeavours such as augmentation and
simulation.

The Social and Ethical Dimensions of Studying Technology

The study of technology has typically been approached from a material stand-
point, consisting of the examination of tools and tool use. Early scholars of
technology paid little attention to the social and ethical implications of tech-
nology, as illustrated in the definition of technology as material substance,
discussed later in this chapter. The focus on how the social, ethical, and
technological come together and influence one another started to become
an object of study in the Marxist tradition around 1850 with its focus on
inequality, which spurred interest in understanding how machines affect
labour. For instance, the textile industry introduced machines to simplify
and speed up work processes, resulting in the employment of non-skilled
workers at lower wages (Berg, 1994); Marxist scholars examined how the
growing use of machinery was a central factor in deskilling (i.e., the elimina-
tion, reduction, or downgrading of skilled labour because of the introduction
of technologies within the workplace) and how it increased tensions in labour
relationships. At this time, then, a transition occurred, away from the study
of technology itself—as merely an object—toward an interest in how technol-
ogy changes social structure and brings about social change. Now, examining
the social side of technology is essential as our society moves toward greater
integration, what Ellul (1964) has described as a technological society. The
concept of a technological society does not describe technology merely as a
tool that exists as an extension of our human faculties, however: it is far more
complex than that. An example of how the social, ethical, and technological
shape one another is the Facebook experiment discussed in Box 1.1.
Box 1.1 shows how technology that we trust, and that we do not think
too much about when engaging with it, can potentially influence our lives,
emotions, and self-worth in unexpected ways. In the case of the Facebook
experiment, we learned that emotional contagion occurs on social media

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 1 The Technological Society 3

Box
1.1 The Facebook Experiment

In the July 2014 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America, an article was published providing evidence of emo-
tional contagion through the exposure to content on social networking sites such
as Facebook. The article described how in 2012 a team consisting of two scholars,
Jeffrey T. Hancock and Jamie Guillory, and a Facebook computational social scien-
tist, Adam D.I. Kramer, conducted a series of large-scale experiments to debunk
an assumption widely held by users. The assumption was that watching Facebook
friends post content with positive emotionality made people feel resentful, leading
to feelings of inadequacy, envy, and perhaps even depression. In other words, seeing
others having fun, being popular among peers, and enjoying themselves may stir
negative emotions in onlookers.
To test this assumption, Kramer et al. (2014) manipulated the content that a
select group of Facebook users viewed on their news feeds. The experiments ran
for a one-week period from 11 January to 18 January 2012. To avoid bias, partici-
pants were randomly selected, yielding a sample of about 155,000 per condition. In
one condition, negative content was removed from participants’ news feeds; in the
other, positive content was removed. Hence, the selected Facebook users saw con-
tent biased toward either positive or negative emotionality. The researchers then
recorded the emotionality of the posts made under each condition.
The findings are illuminating in several ways. First, through the manipulation of
content, users’ posts can be influenced. Those Facebook users who saw less nega-
tive content posted more positive content themselves and vice versa. This clearly
shows that through manipulating content on these sites, users’ emotionality can
also be controlled. Second, the more emotional the content, the more engagement
was observed in general. The authors concluded that the lack of emotionality on
these sites is probably the single most detrimental factor for engagement:
We also observed a withdrawal effect: People who were exposed to fewer
emotional posts (of either valence) in their news feeds were less expressive
overall on the following days, addressing the question about how emotional
expression affects social engagement online. (p. 8790)

Finally, there are ethical questions concerning how the experiments were con-
ducted, which ultimately led Facebook to apologize to its users. Of course, con-
ducting experiments is not necessarily a problem in and of itself, in principle, and
is common practice in many disciplines. For example, much of what we know about
drug efficacy for the treatment of mental health comes from knowledge gained
through experimental design. However, the media, academics, and the general pub-
lic all harshly criticized how this particular experiment was conducted because of its
ethical implications and methodological shortcomings. The primary reason for the
upheaval centred on the fact that those who were included in the experiment were
not informed about their participation, something referred to as informed consent,
nor were they properly debriefed. Debriefing is a central part of experimental design,
Continued

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 4 Technology and Society

as it gives those who partake (voluntarily) in experiments the opportunity to learn

exactly what the experiment intended to manipulate and how this may or may not
affect them. It is also problematic for academics to engage in research that does not
follow the protocols and guidelines put forth by universities, as this creates a gen-
eral distrust in research and negatively affects the relationship between researchers
and the individuals who participate in their studies.

sites in general, and that what we see can easily be manipulated and modi-
fied through computer algorithms.

Historical Definitions of Technology

Defining technology is no easy task. In the 2009 movie Star Trek, Scotty sug-
gests that “transwarp beaming” is “like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller
bullet, whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse” (Abrams, 2009).1 Defining
technology presents a similar challenge, and scholars have proposed many
different definitions of the concept. In this section, we will review five differ-
ent definitions, from the narrowest to the broadest, which view technology
as (1) material substance, (2) knowledge, (3) practice, (4) technique, and
(5) society.

1. Technology as Material Substance

Until the nineteenth century, the study of technology was primarily the focus
of the technical fields or applied sciences; little work on technology was done
in, for example, the social sciences or humanities. In technical fields tech-
nology was primarily defined as consisting of technical components; little
attention was paid to the interplay of technology and society. Within this very
materialistic approach, technology is viewed as “a radical other to humanity”
(Feist, Beauvais, & Shukla, 2010, p. 8), an entity that exists outside of the
social realm. This approach sees technology, then, as a passive object, a tool
created by humans to be used under our control (Feist et al., 2010).
By examining technology as only material substance, the complex
interplay of technology and society is disregarded. This tunnel vision limits
our understanding of technology and does not allow for an examination of
social change resulting from technology. This view has been largely dis-
credited and a number of alternative definitions have been proposed.

2. Technology as Knowledge
In the same way that technology is closely interlinked with science, it is
also closely connected to knowledge. At the most basic level, “[t]echnology

901471_01_Ch01.indd 4 07/08/15 6:50 AM

 1 The Technological Society 5

is based upon, utilizes, and generates a complex body of knowledge, part

of which may reasonably be called specifically technological knowledge”
(McGinn, 1978, p. 186). In contrast to scientific knowledge, technological
knowledge stems from human activity, often in relation to an artifact
(Hershbach, 1995). Artifacts2 are defined as all objects that have been
modified, modelled, or produced according to a set of humanly imposed
attributes. Examples of artifacts are tools, weapons, ornaments, utensils,
and buildings. Technological knowledge is therefore focused on the ability
to create, utilize, or transform objects with the aim of facilitating certain
activities or achieving specific goals (McGinn, 1978). This distinguishes
technological knowledge from scientific knowledge, which can be applied to
the design and building of artifacts but is not directly linked with practical
applications (see the discussion in Chapter 2). Scientific knowledge, in con-
trast, is abstract and consists of our understanding of the natural world. For
instance, calculus, as a branch of mathematics, provides an understanding
of limits, functions, derivatives, and integrals, and at the same time we can
observe its value in real-world applications. Hence, calculus provided to a
large extent the foundation for a practical invention, namely the introduc-
tion of the steam engine (Restivo, 2005).
The metaphor of technology as knowledge can, however, be limiting in
two ways. First, it does not consider that the knowledge required to create,
utilize, and transform objects is a different entity than the object itself, even if
the object was invented based on this knowledge. Second, the metaphor dis-
regards the impact that technology has on society by limiting technology to
expertise, skill, and know-how. Layton’s model of technology and knowledge
is useful to examine next because it overcomes some of these limitations.
While also using the metaphor of technology as knowledge, in his model
Layton distinguishes between the technology itself and the knowledge avail-
able about the technology. At the centre of Layton’s model of technology
is the process of technological development in which “technological ideas
must be translated into designs” which then “must be implemented by tech-
niques and tools to produce things” (Layton, 1974, p. 38). From this view-
point, a model of technology emerges in which technology is not a single
entity but, rather, embodies three different elements:

1. Ideas: Ideas are at one end of the spectrum, representing the thought
processes that precede the tool, which is often referred to as the techno-
logical imagination. Ideas about what objects are useful motivate design
and development.
2. Design: Design is in the middle of the spectrum, mediating between the
abstract idea and the object. Design is the step that is required to go
from idea to tool development and is where craftsmanship is needed.

901471_01_Ch01.indd 5 07/08/15 6:50 AM

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 prison in Frederica,
Georgia. He was
left to die in the fort.
The British soldiers
were not as friendly
as British
diplomats. During
the French and
Indian War of the
late 1750s and the
early 1760s, when
England battled
France for
supremacy in the
New World, English
soldiers treated the
Cherokees with
disdain and
violence. The
Cherokees returned
the atrocities in
kind. The frontier
blazed with death
and destruction;
each side
accumulated its
own collection of
horrors endured
Smithsonian Institution and meted out.
Although Cherokee
In 1730, Sir Alexander Cuming took chiefs sued for
seven Cherokee leaders to England peace, Gov. William
in an attempt to build up good Henry Lyttleton of
relations with the tribe. Among the South Carolina
group was the youth Ukwaneequa declared war on
(right), who was to become the great them in 1759. The
Cherokee chief Attakullakulla. Carolinas offered
 25 English pounds
for every Indian scalp. A year later the Cherokees, under the
command of Oconostota, captured Fort Loudoun at the fork of the
Tellico and Little Tennessee rivers. But in June of 1761, Capt. James
Grant and some 2,600 men destroyed the Nation’s Middle Towns,
burning 600 hectares (1,500 acres) of corn, beans, and peas, and
forcing 5,000 Cherokees into the forests for the winter.
After the English defeated the French in 1763, the British
government moved to appease the Indians and consolidate its
control of the continent. A British proclamation forbade all white
settlement beyond the Appalachian divide. But the proclamation was
soon to be broken. Pioneers such as Daniel Boone and James
Robertson successfully led their own and neighbors’ families through
Appalachian gaps and river valleys until a trickle of explorers
became a flood of homesteaders. During the next decade, settlers
poured across the mountains into Kentucky and northeastern
Tennessee.
While England was regaining the friendship of the Cherokees, the
American colonists were alienating both the Indians and the British.
In the late 1760s a group of North Carolinians calling themselves
Regulators opposed taxation, land rents, and extensive land grants
to selected individuals, and caused unrest throughout the Piedmont.
In 1771, at Alamance, an estimated 2,000 Regulators were defeated
by the troops of British Gov. William Tryon. Thousands of anti-
royalist North Carolinians fled westward as a result of this battle.
Alexander Cameron, an English representative living in the Overhill
Towns, wrote in 1766 that the pioneer occupation of Cherokee lands
amounted to an infestation by villains and horse thieves that was
“enough to create disturbances among the most Civilized Nations.”
The protest spirit of the Regulators spread to the New England
colonies during the early 1770s. By 1776, when the American
Revolution began, the Cherokees had understandably but
unfortunately chosen to take the British side. Britain issued guns to
all Indians and offered rewards for American scalps, yet this was not
enough to secure the over-mountain territory for the English crown.
Within a year, American forces were fighting for the frontier, and in a
coordinated pincer movement, Col. Samuel Jack with 200
Georgians, Gen. Griffith Rutherford with 2,400 North Carolinians,
Col. Andrew Williamson with 1,800 South Carolinians, and Col.
William Christian with 2,000 Virginians demolished more than 50
Cherokee towns. Two treaties resulted from this campaign; more
than 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of Indian land, including
northeastern Tennessee, much of South Carolina, and all lands east
of the Blue Ridge, were ceded to the United States.
 Ayunini, or Swimmer, was a medicine man. He was a
major source of information about Cherokee history,
mythology, botany, and medicine when James
Mooney of the Bureau of American Ethnology visited
the area in 1888.
Smithsonian Institution
Peace did not follow the treaties, however. Dragging Canoe, pock-
marked son of Attakullakulla, decided to fight. Against the wishes of
many Cherokee chiefs, he organized a renegade tribe that moved to
five Lower Towns near present-day Chattanooga where they became
known as the Chickamaugas. But the eventual outcome of the
drama had already been determined. Despite conflict and danger,
the settlers pushed on. In 1780 the Tennesseans John Sevier and
Isaac Shelby joined forces with those of William Campbell from
Virginia and Joseph McDowell from North Carolina and managed to
win a decisive victory over the English at Kings Mountain, South
Carolina. By fighting Indian-style on rugged hillside terrain, they
overwhelmed a detachment of General Cornwallis’ southern forces
under Col. Patrick Ferguson. These over-mountain men immediately
returned to Tennessee and in reprisal for Indian raids during their
absence destroyed Chota and nine other Overhill Towns,
slaughtering women and children as well as Cherokee warriors.
In 1783, with the end of the Revolution, all hope for the survival of
the original Cherokee Nation was extinguished. Although the newly
formed American government attempted to conciliate the Indians, it
could not prevent its own citizens from hungering for ever larger
bites of land. Treaties with the loose Cherokee confederation of
clans became more and more frequent. As if by fate, a disastrous
smallpox epidemic struck the Cherokees; the number of warriors
dwindled to less than half of what it had been 50 years before. The
Cherokee capital was moved from Chota southward into Georgia. In
1794 Maj. James Ore and 550 militiamen from Nashville, Tennessee,
obliterated the Chickamaugas and their Five Towns.
Most of the Cherokees parted with the Smokies. At the Treaty of
Holston in 1791, they gave up the northeastern quarter of what is
now the park. Seven years later, they ceded a southern strip. And at
Washington, D.C., in February of 1819, nearly a century after their
first treaty with the white man in 1721, the Cherokees signed their
21st treaty. This time they parted with a quarter of their entire Nation,
and they lost the rest of their sacred Smoky Mountains. Scattered
families continued to live in the foothills. But the newcomer—this
pioneer turned settler—had arrived.
 Between her many had-to-be-done tasks around the
house, Mollie McCarter Ogle rocks her daughter Mattie
on the porch.
Laura Thornborough
 The Pioneers Arrive
Into the Smokies they came, but the coming was slow. The early
pioneers of the Old Southwest had conquered the lowlands of North
Carolina and Tennessee with relative ease. The higher country of the
Great Smoky Mountains, set into the Southern Appalachians like a
great boulder among scattered stones, would yield less quickly.
The pioneers began, as the Cherokees had done, with the most
accessible land. The level Oconaluftee valley, stretching its timbered
swath from present-day Cherokee, North Carolina, on up into the
forks and tributaries of the Great Smokies, beckoned with at least
some possibilities to the hopeful settler. As early as 1790, Dr. Joseph
Dobson, a North Carolina Revolutionary War veteran who had
accompanied Rutherford on his 1777 campaign against the
Cherokees, entered into deed a tract on the Oconaluftee. But the
claim was void; the valley still belonged to the Indians.
John Walker had also ridden with Rutherford. His son Felix, a
student and friend of Dr. Dobson, lawfully received in 1795 a sizable
land grant to the valley. Young Walker was more than willing to let
settlers attempt development of this wild area. Two North Carolina
families decided to try. John Jacob Mingus and Ralph Hughes took
their wives and children and journeyed into the “Lufty” regions of the
Smokies. They cleared small homesteads by the river; they were all
alone.
In 1803, Abraham Enloe and his family moved up from South
Carolina and joined the growing families of Mingus and Hughes.
Enloe chose land directly across the river from John Mingus, and by
1820 Abraham’s daughter Polly had married John, junior. “Dr. John,”
as the younger Mingus was respectfully called in his later years,
learned much about medicine from the scattered Cherokees
remaining in the area.
Other families, Carolinian and Georgian and Virginian alike, arrived
and stayed. Collins, Bradley, Beck, Conner, Floyd, Sherrill: these and
others settled beside the river itself, and their children moved along
the creeks and branches. Fresh lands were cleared, new homes
built; the Oconaluftee was being transformed. And further to the
southwest, Forney Creek was being claimed by Crisps and
Monteiths, Coles and Welches; Deep Creek had already been
colonized by Abraham Wiggins and his descendants.
The Tennessee side of the Smokies, furrowed by its own series of
rivers and creeks, awaited settlement. By 1800 a few Virginians and
Carolinians were drifting into the four-year-old state of Tennessee,
willing to settle.
The first family of Gatlinburg was probably a mother and her seven
children. This widow, Martha Huskey Ogle, brought five sons and
two daughters from Edgefield, South Carolina. Richard Reagan, a
Scotch-Irishman from Virginia, and his family joined the Ogles and
began to clear land. His son, Daniel Wesley Reagan, born in 1802,
was the first child of the settlement and later became a leading
citizen of the community. The elder Reagan was fatally injured when
a heavy wind blew the limb from a tree on him, reminding the little
community once more of the precarious nature of survival in this
free, stern country.
Maples, Clabos, and Trenthams followed the Ogles and the
Reagans into the Gatlinburg area. Nearby Big Greenbrier Cove
became known as “the Whaley Settlement.” Some settlers traveled
directly across the crest of the Smokies, via Indian and Newfound
Gaps, but these old Cherokee trails and cattle paths were rough and
overgrown. Horses could barely make it through, and most
possessions had to be carried on stout human shoulders. Besides
the usual pots, tools, guns, and seeds were the Bibles and treasured
manmade mementos.
Many settlers, having been soldiers of the Revolution, had received
20-hectare (50-acre) land grants for a mere 75 cents. They pushed
along the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River, past Gatlinburg, up
among the steep slopes of the Bull Head, the Chimney Tops, the
Sugarland Mountain. This narrow Sugarlands valley, strewn with
water-smoothed boulders and homestead-sized plateaus of level
land, attracted dozens of families. But this rocky country forced the
settlers to clear their fields twice, first of the forest and then of the
stones.
The work of clearing demanded strong muscles, long hours, and
sturdy spirits. It meant denting the hard armor of the forest and
literally fighting for a tiny patch of cropland. Men axed the huge trees
with stroke after grinding stroke, then either wrenched the stumps
from the earth with teams of oxen or burned them when they had
dried. Some trees were so immense that all a man could do was
“girdle” them, which meant deep-cutting a fatal circle into the bark to
arrest the flow of sap. Such “deadenings” might stand for years with
crops planted on the “new ground,” before the trees were finally cut
and often burned. Logs and stumps from the virgin forest often
smouldered for days or weeks.
The soil itself was rich and loamy with the topsoil of centuries. Land
that had produced great forests could also nourish fine crops. During
the first year of settlement, all able-bodied members of the family
helped cultivate the new ground. Such land demanded particular
attention. Using a single-pointed “Bull tongue” plow to bite deep into
the earth and a sharp iron “coulter” to cut tough roots left under the
massive stumps, a succession of plows, horses, and workers
prepared and turned the newly cleared field. The first man “laid off”
the rows into evenly spaced lengths, the second plowed an adjacent
furrow, and the wife or children dropped in the seed. A third plow
covered this planted row by furrowing along its side. A short while
later, the same workers would “bust middles” by plowing three extra
furrows into the ground between the seeded rows. This loosened the
soil and destroyed any remaining roots.
While fields throughout the Smokies were yielding to the plow, even
more isolated coves and creeks were being penetrated and settled.
Gunters, Webbs, McGahas, and Suttons found their way into Big
Creek. And in 1818, John Oliver walked into a secluded Tennessee
cove, spent the night in an Indian hut, and then became familiar with
one of the most beautiful and productive spots in all the Great
Smokies. This
broad, well-watered
basin of fertile land
was named after the
wife of an old
Cherokee chief; it
was called Kate’s
Cove, later Cades
Cove.
John Oliver settled in
that cove. Three
years later—two
years after the
decisive 1819 treaty
with the Cherokees
—William Tipton
settled there legally,
bought up most of
the land, and
parceled it out to
paying newcomers.
David Foute came
and established an
iron forge in 1827.
By mixing iron ore
with limestone and
charcoal, this
“bloomery forge”
produced chunks of Edouard E. Exline
iron called “blooms.”
The forge, similar to Uncle George Lamon sits next to
many which sprang one of his honey bee boxes at his
up throughout home in Gumstand, near
Appalachia, was Gatlinburg.
indeed an asset, but
its low-grade ore and the cost of charcoal forced it to close only 20
years later.
Russell Gregory built a homestead high in the cove and ranged
cattle on a nearby grassy bald. These mysterious open meadows
scattered throughout the Smokies were of unknown origin. Had
Indians kept them cleared in years gone by? Had some unexplained
natural circumstance created them? Pioneers and later experts alike
remained baffled and attracted by the lush grass which, growing
among forest-covered crags and pinnacles, provided excellent
forage for livestock. The present-day Parson’s and Gregory Balds
were named for enterprising farmers who made early use of this
phenomenon. Peter Cable, a friend of William Tipton, joined the
valley settlement in Cades Cove. Cable’s son-in-law, Dan Lawson,
expanded Cable’s holdings into a narrow mountain-to-mountain
empire.
Cades Cove, with its vast farmland, soon rivaled Oconaluftee and
Cataloochee. The lower end of the cove sometimes became
swampy, but this pasture was reclaimed by a series of dikes and log
booms. To escape an 1825 epidemic of typhoid in the Tennessee
lowlands, Robert Shields and his family moved up into the hill-
guarded cove. Two of his sons married John Oliver’s daughters and
remained in Cades Cove. A community had been formed.
But the life in these small communities was not easy. Each family
farmed for a living; each family homestead provided for its own
needs and such luxuries as it could create. Isolation from outside
markets made cash crops, and hence cash itself, relatively
insignificant. The settlers of the Great Smokies depended upon
themselves. They built their own cabins and corncribs, their own
meat- and apple- and spring-houses. They cultivated a garden
whose corn, potatoes, and other vegetables would last the family
through the winter. They set about insuring a continuous supply of
pork and fruit and grains, wool and sometimes cotton, and all the
other commodities necessary to keep a family alive.
Edouard E. Exline
Most families had several scaffolds in their yards on
which they dried fruits, beans, corn, and even duck
and chicken feathers for stuffing pillows.

Charles S. Grossman
Near most houses was a smokehouse in which meat
was cured and often stored for later use.
Charles S. Grossman
Fruits and other goods were stored in barns or sheds,
often located over cool springs.
Edouard E. Exline
Food also was stored in pie safes. The pierced tin
panels allow air into the cabinet but prevent flies from
getting at the food.
Living off the land required both labor and ingenuity. These early
settlers did not mind fishing and hunting for food throughout the
spring, summer, and early fall, but there were also the demands of
farming and livestock raising. They carved out of wood such
essentials as ox yokes and wheat cradles, spinning wheels and
looms. Men patiently rebuilt and repaired anything from a broken
harness to a sagging “shake” roof made of hand-riven shingles.
Children picked quantities of wild berries and bushels of beans in
sun-hot fields and gathered eggs from hidden hen nests in barn lofts
and under bushes. They found firewood for the family, carried water
from the spring, bundled fodder from cane and corn, and stacked
hay for the cattle, horses, mules, and oxen.
Women made sure that the food supply stretched to last through the
winter. They helped salt and cure pork from the hogs that their
husbands slaughtered. They employed a variety of methods to
preserve vital fruits and vegetables. Apples, as well as beans, were
carefully dried in the hot summer or autumn sun; water, added
months later, would restore a tangy flavor. Some foods were pickled
in brine or vinegar.
Women also used sulphur as a preservative, especially with apples.
Called simply “fruit” by the early settlers, apples such as the favorite
Limbertwigs and Milams gave both variety and nutrition to the
pioneer diet. A woman might peel and slice as much as two
dishpans of “fruit” into a huge barrel. She would then lay a pan of
sulphur on top of the apples and light the contents. By covering the
barrel with a clean cloth, she could regulate the right amount of
fumes held inside. The quickly sulfurated apples remained white all
winter and were considered a delicacy by every mountain family.
Food, clothing, shelter, and incessant labor: these essentials formed
only the foundation of a life. Intangible forces hovered at the edges
and demanded
fulfillment. As hardy
and practical as the
physical existence of
the pioneers had to
be, there was
another dimension
to life. The pioneers
were human beings.
Often isolated,
sometimes lonely,
they yearned for the
comforts of myth
and superstition and
religion—and the
roads that led in and
out. The Cherokees
in their time had
created such
comforts; they had
woven their myths
and had laced the
Smokies with a
network of trails.
Now it was the white
man’s turn.
The early settlers of
the Great Smoky
Mountains were not Aiden Stevens
content to remain
only in their hidden In the days before refrigerators,
hollows and on their many methods and kinds of
tiny homesteads. containers were used in preserving
Challenging the and storing foods. Corn meal, dried
mountain ranges beans and other vegetables, and
and the rough sulphured fruits were kept in bins
terrain, they made from hollow black gum logs.
constructed roads.
In the mid-1830s, a project was undertaken to lay out a road across
the crest of the Smokies and connect North Carolina’s Little
Tennessee valley with potential markets in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Although the North Carolina section was never completed, an old
roadbed from Cades Cove to Spence Field is still in existence. When
Julius Gregg established a licensed distillery in Cades Cove and
processed brandy from apples and corn, farmers built a road from
the cove down Tabcat Creek to the vast farmlands along the Little
Tennessee River.
By far the most ambitious road project was the Oconaluftee
Turnpike. In 1832, the North Carolina legislature chartered the
Oconaluftee Turnpike Company. Abraham Enloe, Samuel Sherrill,
John Beck, John Carroll, and Samuel Gibson were commissioners
for the road and were authorized to sell stock and collect tolls. The
road itself was to run from Oconaluftee all the way to the top of the
Smokies at Indian Gap.
Work on the road progressed slowly. Bluffs and cliffs had to be
avoided; such detours lengthened the turnpike considerably.
Sometimes the rock was difficult to remove. Crude blasting—
complete with hand-hammered holes, gunpowder inside hollow
reeds, and fuses of straw or leaves—constituted one quick and sure,
but more expensive, method. Occasionally, the men burned logs
around the rock, then quickly showered it with creek water. When the
rock split from the sudden change in temperature, it could then be
quarried and graded out. Throughout the 1830s, residents of
Oconaluftee and nearby valleys toiled and sweated to lay down this
single roadbed.
This desire and effort to conquer the wilderness also prompted the
establishment of churches and, to a lesser extent, schools. In the
Tennessee Sugarlands, services were held under the trees until a
small building was constructed at the beginning of the 19th century.
The valley built a larger five-cornered Baptist church in 1816.
Prospering Cades Cove established a Methodist church in 1830; its
preacher rode the Little River circuit. Five years later, the church had
40 members.
Over on the Oconaluftee, Ralph Hughes had donated land and Dr.
John Mingus had built a log schoolhouse. Monthly prayer meetings
were held there until the Lufty Baptist Church was officially organized
in 1836. Its 21 charter members included most of the turnpike
commissioners plus the large Mingus family. Five years later, the
members built a log church at Smokemont on land donated by John
Beck.
Nothing fostered these settlers’ early gropings toward community
more than stories. Legends and tall tales, begun in family
conversations and embellished by neighborly rumor, forged a bond,
a unity of interest, a common history, in each valley and on each
meandering branch. For example, in one western North Carolina
tradition that would thrive well into the 20th century, Abraham Enloe
was cited as the real father of Abraham Lincoln. Nancy Hanks, it was
asserted, had worked for a time in the Enloe household and had
become pregnant. Exiled to Kentucky, she married Thomas Lincoln
but gave birth to Abraham’s child.
Stories mingled with superstition. The Cherokees dropped seven
grains into every corn hill and never thinned their crop. Many early
settlers of the Smokies believed that if corn came up missing in
spots, some of the family would die within a year. Just as the
Cherokees forbade counting green melons or stepping across the
vines because “it would make the vines wither,” the Smokies settlers
looked upon certain events as bad omens. A few days before
Richard Reagan’s skull was fractured, a bird flew on the porch where
he sat and came to rest on his head. Reagan himself saw it as a
“death sign.”
Superstition, combined with Indian tradition, led to a strangely exact
form of medicine. One recipe for general aches and pains consisted
of star root, sourwood, rosemary, sawdust, anvil dust, water, and
vinegar. A bad memory required a properly “sticky” tea made of
cocklebur and jimsonweed.
A chief medicinal herb was an unusual wild plant known as ginseng.
Called “sang” in mountain vernacular, its value lay in the manlike
shape of its dual-pronged roots. Oriental cultures treasured ginseng,