What does it mean to wield or possess a certain technology? What are the limits to associational claims to technical expertise or superiority? In this podcast, Daniel Pontillo considers these cultural and social dimensions of technology through a study of the travel narrative Across Asia on a Bicycle, in which two American men set out at in the heat of the late nineteenth-century bicycle craze to use their new technology to tame the rugged Asian geography. In our discussion, we focus on the first leg of their trip, which was carried out in Ottoman Anatolia.

A complete PDF of this travel narrative is available at our website ottomanhistorypodcast.com