Kieran Downes graduated from The Evergreen State College in 1997, and spent several years working as a web technology consultant and HTML lackey for an advertising agency before coming to MIT. His current research explores enthusiasm and user innovation within broader social, political and cultural frameworks of technological progress in the twentieth century. Specifically, he is researching how particular artifacts — namely vacuum tubes — in the high-end audio and guitar amplification industries have shaped innovation in these areas, and how the non-linear path of these artifacts in the hands of enthusiastic user communities reflects upon and challenges larger narratives of technological progress.
history of technology; modern American history; history of Cold War science; vacuum tubes and high-end audio technology; technological enthusiasm
http://web.mit.edu/~kieran/www/
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
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