Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity

by Edward Tenner

  38. Athletic Footwear Association, The U.S. Athletic Footwear Market Today (1998 and 1999); Ann Wozencraft, “Sports Retailing Chains Can’t Seem to Get It Right,” New York Times, November 28, 1999.

  39. Suzanne Kapner, “Market Savvy,” Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1998; William A. Rossi, “The Shoe Industry’s 20-Year Snooze,” Footwear News, vol. 54, no. 25 (July 22, 1998), 12; William A. Rossi, “Athletic Footwear: Facing Hard Realities,” Footwear News, vol. 54, no. 21 (May 25, 1998), 32; Aaron Donovan, “A Long Walk, and a Gift of New Shoes,” New York Times, December 7, 1999 (on an unemployed engineer enabled by the newspaper’s Neediest Cases Fund to replace his worn-out sneakers with Timberland boots); Tasha Zemke, “Foot Race,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 6, 1998; Antony Ramirez, “The Pedestrian Sneaker Makes a Comeback,” New York Times, October 14, 1990; “Know It All: Footwear Questions Asked and Answered,” Footwear News, June 13, 1994, 14; “Nike Set to Sell Cheap Shoes,” Associated Press report, September 15, 1999 (source: http://www.abcnews.com).

  40. Luella Bartley, “Death of the Trainer,” Vogue (London), August 1998, n.p.; Steele, Shoes, 175–79; Deyan Sudjic, “Nike Air Zoom Seismic,” Weekend Financial Times, How to Spend It magazine, no. 36 (May 1999), 69.

  41. Timothy Egan, “The Swoon of the Swoosh,” New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1998, 66; Mitchell Raphael, “Corporate Perversion,” To r onto Star, February 7, 1998; Kathryn Kranhold and Suzanne Vranica, “Amid Heavy Dot-Com Spending on Ads, 1999 Saw the Good, the Bad and the Bizarre,” Wall Street Journal, December 31, 1999; “Scuffle of the Week,” The Lawyer, June 21, 1999, 56; Lisa de Moraes, “Putting On the Dogs,” Washington Post, February 8, 1999; Bob Garfield, “Chauvinist Pigskin,” Advertising Age, February 1, 1999; Nita Lelyveld, “Disparate Grievances Land at Same Doorstep,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 2, 1999.

  42. Athletic Footwear Association, Footwear Market (1999), 3; Ellen Simon, “Fading Footprints,” Newark Star-Ledger, September 26, 1999; Cragg Hines, “Republican National Convention,” Houston Chronicle, August 12, 1996; Dan Morain, “Stanley Mosk: Will Dean of High Court Hang It Up?” Los Angeles Times, January 26, 1986; “Foot Notes,” New York Times, April 6, 1980.

  43. Steven E. Robbins and Gerard J. Gouw, “Athletic Footwear: Unsafe Due to Perceptual Illusions,” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, vol. 23, no. 2 (February 1991), 217–24; E. C. Frederick and Peter R. Cavanagh, letter, Medicine and Science and Sports and Exercise, vol. 24, no. 1 (January 1992), 144–45, and reply by Steven E. Robbins and Gerard J. Gouw, 145–47, and literature cited; Steven E. Rob-bins and Adel M. Hanna, “Running-Related Injury Prevention Through Barefoot Adaptations,” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, vol. 19, no. 2 (February 1987), 148–56; Steven Robbins, Gerard J. Gouw, and Jacqueline McClaran, “Shoe Sole Thickness and Hardness Influence Balance in Older Men,” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol. 40, no. 11 (November 1992), 1089–94; Steven Robbins and Edward Waked, “Balance and Vertical Impact in Sports: Role of Shoe Sole Materials,” Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, vol. 78, no. 5 (May 1987), 463–67; “Like to Walk? Put Away Your Walking Shoes,” Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter, April 1997, 1, 6; Steven Robbins and Edward Waked, “Hazard of Deceptive Advertising of Athletic Footwear,” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 279, no. 13 (April 1998), 976F; Tom Carter, “Do Barefoot Athletes Have a Leg Up?” Washington Times, September 5, 1991; “Canadian Doctor Advises Distance Runners to Go Barefootin’,” Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), August 23, 1987.

  44. Frederick and Cavanagh, letter, 144–45; Beverley Smith, “Pricy Shoes Overrated, Report Says,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 11, 1997; David Israelson, “Shoemakers Stomp Sole Study,” To r onto Star, December 12, 1997; Joe Henderson, “Shoes and Feet,” Runner’s World, vol. 21, no. 10 (November 1986), 8.

  45. Steven Robbins, Edward Waked, and Nicholas Krouglicof, “Improving Balance,” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol. 46, no. 11 (November 1998), 1363–70; Robbins, Gouw, and McClaran, “Sole Thickness,” 1093.

  46. John McCarry, “The Promise of Pakistan,” National Geographic, vol. 192, no. 4 (October 1997), 60–61, 65–67.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1. Andy Rooney, “A Chair That Fits, That’s What We Need,” San Diego Union-Tribune, May 23, 1989.

  2. Ada S. Ballin, The Science of Dress in Theory and Practice (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1883), 229; Wilhelm Thomsen, Die Geschichte der Schuhreform Hermann von Meyer’s und ihre Beziehungen zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1940), 1–14; Modern Chairs, 1918–1970 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1970), 90; Alice Rawsthorn, “Tate Modern Take-away,” Financial Times, May 6, 2000.

  3. Gordon W. Hewes, “The Anthropology of Posture,” Scientific American, vol. 196, no. 2 (February 1957), 122–32; Walter B. Pitkin, Take It Easy: The Art of Relaxation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1935), 34–35; William C. Hayes, The Scepter of Egypt, 2 parts (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990), pt. 1, 258–59, 262–65; pt. 2, 200–202.

  4. Bernard Lewis, The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (New York: Scribners, 1995), 7, unnumbered illustrations.

  5. Li Xing, “Furniture Took Ages to Grow Legs,” China Daily (Beijing), October 31, 1988 (thanks to Karl Kroemer for calling this article to my attention); Wang Shixiang, Classic Chinese Furniture: Ming and Early Qing Dynasties, trans. Sarah Handler and the author (London: Han-Shan Tang, 1986), 14–16, 19–21; Sarah Handler, Austere Luminosity of Chinese Classical Furniture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 9–24.

  6. K. H. E. Kroemer, H. B. Kroemer, and K. E. Kroemer-Elbert, Ergonomics: How to Design for Ease and Efficiency (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1994), 365–69; Thierry Bardini, Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), illustration section, n.p.

  7. Ralph S. Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985), plate 12.

  8. See Lorenz Homberger and Piet Meyer, “Concerning African Objects,” and Roy Sieber, “African Furniture Between Tradition and Colonization,” in Sandro Bocola, ed., African Seats (Munich: Prestel, 1996), 22–29 and 30–37, respectively.

  9. Li, “Furniture,” 8; Diana Fane, ed., Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1996), 284–85, 119; The New York Times Capsule, exhibition label, American Museum of Natural History, New York, visited April 6, 2000.

  10. Andrew Pollack, “In a Painful Situation, Japanese Choose Chairs,” New York Times, August 25, 1995.

  11. “Researcher: Japanese-Style Toilets Produce Strong Thighs,” Report from Japan, May 21, 1993, Nippon Notes section, n.p.; Takuo Fujita and Masaaki Fukase, “Comparison of Osteoporosis and Calcium Intake Between Japan and the United States,” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, vol. 200 (1992), 149–52; Emily Yoffe, “Maybe All That Milk You’ve Been Drinking Is to Blame,” http://www.slate.com, August 2, 1999.

  12. Galen Cranz, The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design (New York: Norton, 1998), 94–101.

  13. Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 48–49; Bruce M. Metzger, “When Did Scribes Begin to Use Writing Desks?” in his Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1968), 123–37.

  14. Saenger, Space Between Words, 48, 315 n. 104; Cranz, Chair, 154–55, 189; Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (New York: Norton, 1969 [1948]), 264–65.

  15. Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command, 282–87; Dora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 53–59.

  16. Fane, Converging Cultures, 278–79; Herman Roodenburg, “The ‘Hand
of Friendship’: Shaking Hands and Other Gestures in the Dutch Republic,” in Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, eds., A Cultural History of Gesture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 158–59. On the chair as frame, see Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., “Have a Seat,” Art News, vol. 48, no. 5 (September 1949), 29–36.

  17. David Nickerson, English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century (New York: Putnam, 1965), 8–9; Geneviève Souchal, French Eighteenth-Century Furniture, trans. Simon Watson Taylor (New York: Putnam, n.d.), 108, 112; John Kassay, The Book of American Windsor Furniture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), 124–36.

  18. Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command, 286–87, 405, 407.

  19. Thomas E. Hill, Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms: A Guide to Correct Writing (Chicago: Hill Standard Book Co., 1882), 28; H. Lachmayer, “Le Bureau du Chef,”in L’EmpireduBureau,1900–2000(Paris: Berger-Levrault and C.N.A.P., 1984),59.

  20. David Yosifon and Peter N. Stearns, “The Rise and Fall of American Posture,” American Historical Review, vol. 103, no. 4 (October 1998), 1069; Gabriel A. Bobrick, School Furniture: A Treatise on Its Construction in Compliance with Hygienic Requirements (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1887), 3–17.

  21. Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command, 404–7.

  22. Kenneth L. Ames, Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 185–232; Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command, 401.

  23. Katherine C. Grier, Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850–1930 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 124–29; Kenneth L. Ames, “The Rocking Chair in Nineteenth-Century America,” Antiques, vol. 103, no. 2 (February 1973), 322–27; Ames, Death in the Dining Room, 216–32.

  24. Cranz, Chair, 101–5; photograph reproduced in John Szarkowski, ed., The Photographer’s Eye (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966), 139, and in George Talbot, ed., At Home: Domestic Life in the Post-Centennial Era, 1876–1920 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976), 6–7.

  25. Cranz, Chair, 155, 206; Adrian Forty, Objects of Desire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 123.

  26. Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (New York: Basic Books, 1990); Richard Gillespie, “Industrial Fatigue and the Discipline of Physiology,” in Gerald L. Geison, ed., Physiology in the American Context, 1850–1940 (Bethesda, Md.: American Physiological Society, 1987), 237–62.

  27. See Roger Cooter and Bill Luckin, eds., Accidents in History: Injuries, Fatalities, and Social Relations (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997); “The Worker’s Chair,” Times (London) Trade Supplement, September 18, 1920, 10; Irving Salomon, “How Correct Seating Affects Manufacturing Profits,” Industrial Management, vol. 63, no. 6 (June 1922), 332.

  28. Diana Condell, Working for Victory: Images of Women in the First World War (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 104–5, 112; E. Matthias, “Getting More from Workers by Giving Them More,” System (London), vol. 33. no. 5 (May 1918), 308–14; “Working Hours That Prevent Fatigue,” System, vol. 34, no. 2 (August 1918), 157–64.

  29. “The Worker’s Chair,” advertisement, System (London), vol. 39, no. 6 (June 1921), 671; G. A. Bettcher, telephone conversation with author, April 5, 2000.

  30. “The Worker’s Chair,” 671; “Scientific Seating,” advertisement, Success (London), vol. 40, no. 5 (November 1921), 427.

  31. “The Worker’s Chair,” 671; “The Worker’s Chair,” advertisement, Success (London), vol. 39, no. 4 (April 1921), 455; “Scientific Seating,” advertisement, Success (London), vol. 40, no. 5 (November 1921), 427; “The Tan-Sad Chair for Workers,” advertisement, Success (London), vol. 40, no. 6 (December 1921), 455; “Prices Which Defy Competition,” advertisement, Success (London), vol. 40, no. 6 (December 1921), 463; “Efficient Seating,” advertisement, Success (London), vol. 43, no. 1 (January 1923), 45.

  32. “Worker’s Chair,” Times (London) Trade Supplement, November 27, 1920, 262; Salomon, “Correct Seating,” 328–30; R. M. Bowen, “Fatigue and Production— Equipment That Eliminates Waste Effort,” Success (London), vol. 48, no. 3 (September 1925), 150.

  33. Forty, Objects of Desire, 140–42; Yosifon and Stearns, “American Posture,” 1073–78; Yolande Amic, “Sièges de Bureau,” in L’Empire du Bureau, 72–74; “Fortschritt-Stuhl,” advertising sheet, 1928 or 1929 (Switzerland), in the Tschichold Collection, Museum of Modern Art (the author thanks Christopher Mount of the Department of Design for making a photocopy available).

  34. Lachmayer, “Bureau du Chef,” 60–61; G. A. Bettcher, telephone conversation, April 5, 2000; “Evolution and Revolution,” advertisement, Success (London), vol. 48, no. 3 (September 1925), 150.

  35. “Domore Chair Company—1920’s,” promotional material from company archives by G. A. Bettcher; G. A. Bettcher, telephone conversation, April 19, 2000.

  36. “Domore Chair Company—1930s,” promotional material supplied by G. A. Bettcher; Jonathan Lipman, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings (New York: Rizzoli, 1986), 85–91; Jack Quinan, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building: Myth and Fact (New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), 62.

  37. G. E. Macherle to Do/More Chair Company, May 10, 1939.

  38. Jennifer Thiele, “Sit Down Before You Read This,” Contract Design, vol. 32, no. 11 (November 1990), 59.

  39. Thiele, “Sit Down,” 61; Gillespie, “Industrial Fatigue,” 253–57.

  40. Eric Larrabee, Knoll Design (New York: Abrams, 1989), 152–53; “Portfolio: Domore 800, Seen by Raymond Loewy Associates.”

  41. “Sitting Down on the Job: Not as Easy as It Seems,” Occupational Health and Safety, vol. 50, no. 10 (October 1981), 24–28; G. A. Bettcher, telephone conversation, April 19, 2000; Thiele, “Sit Down,” 61; “The Big Stakes in Designing a Place to Sit,” BusinessWeek, April 26, 1976, 46J.

  42. “Machines à s’asseoir,” Progressive Architecture, vol. 61, no. 5 (May 1980), 126–31.

  43. David Morton, “Poetic Pragmatics,” Progressive Architecture, vol. 59, no. 9 (September 1978), 98–101.

  44. “You’re Looking at the Control Core of the Most Advanced Task Chair Ever Developed,” brochure (Washington, D.C.: Rudd International, 1982).

  45. United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Scientific and Technical Information Office, Anthropometric Source Book, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: National Technical Information Service, 1978); J. Jay Keegan, “Alterations of the Lumbar Curve Related to Posture and Seating,” Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, vol. 35-A, no. 3 (July 1953), 589–603; “The Science of Easy Chairs,” Nature, vol. 18, no. 468 (October 17, 1878), 637–38; A. C. Mandal, “The Seated Man (Homo Sedens),” Applied Ergonomics, vol. 12, no. 3 (March 1981), 19–26; A. C. Mandal, “Balanced Seating,” Interior Design, vol. 58, no. 15 (December 1987), 178–79.

  46. Cranz, Chair, 170–76.

  47. “Can Your Chair Do This?” Managing Office Technology, vol. 41, no. 1 (January 1996), 38 ff.

  48. Lawrence Shames, “Seats of Power,” New York Times Magazine, June 11, 1989, 65–66, 78–79.

  49. William Houseman, “The Preface to a Serious Chair,” Design Quarterly, no. 126 (1984), 5–23; “An Automatic Winner?” Design, no. 453 (September 1986), 40–41; Alix M. Freedman, “Today’s Office Chair Promises Happiness, Has Lots of Knobs,” Wall Street Journal, June 18, 1986, n.p.; Jura Koncius, “Furniture: High Style Comes to the Workplace,” Washington Post, June 19, 1986, Washington Home sec., 9.

  50. Vernon Mays, “The Ultimate Office Chair,” Progressive Architecture, vol. 69, no. 5 (May 1988), 98 ff.

  51. Robert Bishop, Centuries and Styles of the American Chair (New York: Dutton, 1972), 373.

  52. Janet Travell, Office Hours: Day and Night (New York: World, 1968), 274.

  53. Terril Yue Jones, “Face Off. Sit on It,” Forbes, July 5, 1999, 53; Scott Leith, “Chair vs. Chair,” Grand Rapids Press, June 13, 1999.

  54. Sue Emily Martin, Fle
xible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).

  55. Dan Logan, “Home Office Thrones,” Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1999.

  56. “Science of Easy Chairs,” 638.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1. A. Roger Ekirch, “Sleep We Have Lost: Preindustrial Slumber in the British Isles,” American Historical Review, vol. 105, no. 2 (April 2000), 343–87; Peter N. Stearns et al., “Children’s Sleep: Sketching Historical Change,” Journal of Social History, vol. 30, no. 2 (Winter 1996), 345–66; Jerome A. Hirschfeld, “The ‘Back-to-Sleep’ Campaign Against SIDS,” American Family Physician, vol. 51, no. 3 (February 15, 1995), 622ff.; Bruce Bower, “Slumber’s Unexplored Landscape,” Science News, vol. 156, no. 13 (September 25, 1999), 205.

  2. Lawrence Wright, Warm and Snug: The History of the Bed (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 177–78.

  3. Robert Gifford and Robert Sommer, “The Desk or the Bed?” Personnel and Guidance Journal, vol. 46, no. 9 (May 1968), 876–78.

  4. Oswyn Murray, “Sympotic History,” in Oswyn Murray, ed., Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 3–13; Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1991), 152–55.

  5. Clive Edwards, “Reclining Chairs Surveyed: Health, Comfort and Fashion in Evolving Markets,” Studies in the Decorative Arts, vol. 6, no. 1 (Fall—Winter 1998–1999), 32–67; Pamela Tudor-Craig, “Times and Tides,” History Today, vol. 48, no. 1 (January 1998), 2–5. On sixteenth-century information overload, see Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 42–45.

  6. Edwards, “Reclining Chairs Surveyed,” 36–37; The Collection of Arne Schlesch (New York: Sotheby’s, 2000), 179; Wendy Moonan, “Scandinavian Dealer Sells His Treasures,” New York Times, March 31, 2000. Despite special mention in the Times, the piece failed to sell, perhaps because the estimate of $10,000 to $15,000 seemed high for what Moonan described as “an 18th-century precursor to the La-Z-Boy.”