ISBN:
0585084149
,
0870238817
,
0870238825
,
9780585084145
Language:
English
Pages:
1 Online-Ressource (xviii, 245 p.)
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als
DDC:
303.48/3
Keywords:
SCIENCE / Philosophy & Social Aspects
;
TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Social Aspects
;
Technologie
;
Sociale aspecten
;
Technology
;
Technology / Social aspects
;
Geschichte
;
Gesellschaft
;
Technology Case studies History
;
Technology Case studies Social aspects
;
Technik
;
Soziale Situation
;
Technischer Fortschritt
;
Geschichte
;
USA
;
USA
;
Fallstudiensammlung
;
USA
;
Technischer Fortschritt
;
Soziale Situation
;
USA
;
Technik
;
Geschichte
Note:
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
,
Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-235) and index
,
1. Introduction: The American Ideology of Technological Progress: Historical Perspectives -- pt. 1. Technology and American History Rethought. 2. The "Middle Landscape": A Critique, a Revision, and an Appreciation. 3. The Automobile and the Prospect of an American Technological Plateau. 4. Alexis de Tocqueville and the Dilemmas of Modernization -- pt. 2. Technological Museums Revisited. 5. The Machine Shop in American Society and Culture. 6. On Technological Museums: A Professor's Perspective. 7. Computers and Museums: Problems and Opportunities of Display and Interpretation -- pt. 3. Four Technological Visions Reexamined. 8. Edward Bellamy and Technology: Reconciling Centralization and Decentralization. 9. The First Feminist Technological Utopia: Mary E. Bradley Lane's Mizora (1890). 10. Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano: An Ambiguous Technological Dystopia. 11. Lewis Mumford's Alternatives to the Megamachine: Critical Utopianism, Regionalism, and Decentralization
,
The repeated failure of technology to fulfill its utopian promise has in recent years created disillusionment with the very idea of progress. Indeed, if technological optimism has characterized modernity, then technological pessimism may become the hallmark of the future. Nowhere has this crisis of faith been more evident than in the United States, where a series of disasters has challenged the long-standing belief that technological innovation necessarily leads to social improvement. Even the surge of renewed confidence in American technology spurred by the alleged efficacy of high-tech weapons systems during the 1991 Persian Gulf War has proved short-lived
,
In a series of case studies, Howard P. Segal reconsiders the American ideology of technological progress and its legacy for our contemporary high-tech world. He offers concrete examples - drawn from United States history, literature, and museums - of the role of technology in American life and the complex relationship between technological advances and social developments. In each instance, he finds technology neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but rather a mixed blessing
Permalink
