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:
“Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“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)