{"product_id":"truck-rebuilding-a-wornout-pickup-and-other-posttechnological-adventures-9780395250181","title":"Truck: Rebuilding a worn-out pickup  and other posttechnological adventures","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Know thy gadgets; first step in restoring some kind of wholeness to ones life.\" So observes John Jerome about his purpose for rebuilding a 1950 Dodge pickup. Yes  he needs the truck to haul manure  but Jerome also hopes that \"by knowing every nut  lockwasher  and cotter pin I could have a machine that had some meaning to me.\" Thus his year-long odyssey under the hood  among the brake shoes and valves  becomes more than a mechanics memoir; it is a meditation on machines  metaphysics  and the moral universe. Nearly two decades after publication in 1977  the essential dilemma of Truck still rings as Jerome dismantles the aged straight six  he also disassembles our reliance on \"two-hundred-dollar appliances that sport flaws in thirty-five-cent parts\" and decries the \"deliberate encapsulation  impenetrability  of the overtechnologized things with which we furnish our lives.\" Despite gouged knuckles  a frigid New Hampshire winter  frustrating and inexplicable assemblies  and a close call when the truck rolls off its jacks  he perseveres. In the end  he admits  \"I did not find God out there in the barn\" among the cans of nuts and bolts.\" What he does find  however  is that he must make peace with technology; its a mistake  he says  to \"assume there is a point on that line between the cavemans club and the moon shot that marks the moral turnaround  before which technology was somehow benign  after which it is malign.\" While Jerome gains a truck that runs-sometimes-we gain new insight into a technology that continues to encroach upon our lives.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45646773616693,"sku":"ByrdShop_0395250188","price":225.74,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780395250181.jpg?v=1781678306","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/truck-rebuilding-a-wornout-pickup-and-other-posttechnological-adventures-9780395250181","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}