Ride to Modernity

Glen Norcliffe sets out to meet two goals connected by a common theme. The theme is the adoption of modernity, with an emphasis "on practical matters of innovation, design, mass production, mass consumption, improved infrastructure and social practices in Canada" (p. 247). His first goal is to use the bicycle as a case study to evaluate a proposed model of sociotechnical development. His second is to create a vivid history of the bicycle in Canada during the late nineteenth century. Norcliffe admits that he is trying to satisfy two audiences—scholars and students of industrial history and geography, on the one hand, and lay people interested in the history of the bicycle or Canadian history on the other—a risky endeavor. But it must be said that he pulls off the job admirably

Aesthetics · Art · Consumption (sociology) · Economics · Management · Media studies · Modernity · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Sociotechnical system · Theme (computing) · Canadian Identity and History · Computer Science · History · Law