A large technical system (LTS) is a system or network of enormous proportions or complexity. The study of LTSs is a subdiscipline of history of science and technology.
The book Rescuing Prometheus by Thomas P. Hughes documents the development of four such systems, including the Boston central artery tunnel and the Internet.
Famous quotes containing the words large, technical and/or system:
“It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We
all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we
are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in
others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we
grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins
the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a
charm to any character, and so our struggle with them
dies away.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The best work of artists in any age is the work of innocence liberated by technical knowledge. The laboratory experiments that led to the theory of pure color equipped the impressionists to paint nature as if it had only just been created.”
—Nancy Hale (b. 1908)
“New York is more now than the sum of its people and buildings. It makes sense only as a mechanical intelligence, a transporter system for the daily absorbing and nightly redeploying of the human multitudes whose services it requires.”
—Peter Conrad (b. 1948)