Alchemy and life. How people and materials changed each other. Ramirez A.

In the book “Alchemy and Life”, the scientist and popularizer of Ainissa Ramirez quotes eight inventions - watches, steel rails, copper communication cables, photophonery, electric lamp, hard disk, laboratory dishes and silicon chips - and shows how they affected them Human experience. Ramirez talks about the woman who “sold time”, of the inventor who inspired Edison, about the enthusiast-entrepreneur, whose discovery prompted the path to creating a computer. Among other things, she describes how the desire for accuracy predetermined our sleep mode, how the railways contributed to the commercialization of Christmas holidays, how the forced brevity of telegrams affected the literary style of Hemingway and how the young chemist exposed the practice of using polaroid chambers for passportization and racial segregation in the conditions of an apartheid in the conditions of an apartheid South Africa. These bright, exciting stories offer an unexpected view of our relations with technology. By building the chronology of each invention and its consequences - expected and unforeseen, Ramirez shows not only as inventors changed the properties of materials, but also as these materials formed a culture.