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:
“All sailors pause to watch a steamer, and shout in welcome or derision. In one a large Newfoundland dog put his paws on the rail and stood up as high as any of them, and looked as wise. But the skipper, who did not wish to be seen no better employed than a dog, rapped him on the nose and sent him below. Such is human justice!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for- the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.”
—Georges Bernanos (1888–1948)