The government machine : a revolutionary history of the computer / Jon Agar.

"In The Government Machine Jon Agar traces the mechanization of government work in the United Kingdom from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. He argues that this transformation has been tied to the rise of "expert movements," groups whose authority has rested on their e...

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Bibliographic Details
Online Access:Electronic book from EBSCO
Main Author: Agar, Jon.
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published:Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2003.
Series:History of computing.
Subjects:
Description
Summary:"In The Government Machine Jon Agar traces the mechanization of government work in the United Kingdom from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. He argues that this transformation has been tied to the rise of "expert movements," groups whose authority has rested on their expertise. The deployment of machines was an attempt to gain control over state action - a revolutionary move.
Agar shows how mechanization followed the popular depiction of government as machine-like, with British civil servants cast as components of a general-purpose "government machine"; indeed, he argues that today's general-purpose computer is the apotheosis of the civil servant."--Jacket.
Physical Description:1 online resource (viii, 554 pages) : illustrations.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (pages 433-533) and index.
ISBN:9780262266857
0262266857
0585481180
9780585481180
Access:Access limited to authorized users.