VISIONS OF TECHNOLOGY: A Century Of Vital Debate About Machines Systems And The Human World (The Sloan Technology Series) - Hardcover

Rhodes, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684839032 ISBN 13: 9780684839035

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1999

Synopsis

A fascinating collection of essays from such writers as Henry Ford, H. G. Wells, and Albert Einstein looks at the development of technology over the course the twentieth century, showing how it has led to both gains and losses for the planet, and charts the future evolution of our technological future. 25,000 first printing.

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Review:

"Technological wariness is an enduring disturbance, with roots in religion," writes popular-science interpreter Rhodes in his introduction to this welcome anthology of 20th-century scientific invention. "Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans carries the sense of it; so does the serpent persuading Eve to taste the knowledgeable apple, and the Jewish myth of the Golem, a Frankenstein's monster animated by incorporations of holy words." Gods and monsters abound in these pages, made up of excerpts from essays, reports, articles, and speeches by both inventors and their critics. Rhodes includes, for instance, a worried editorial from 1931 by the journalist Floyd Allport, who presciently noted the community-destroying effects of technological advances such as the private car and the telephone; he also reproduces any number of warnings from the likes of Aldous Huxley, Vannevar Bush, and Edward Abbey that humankind's scientific imagination far outstrips our moral capacity. Joining these jeremiads in Rhodes's pages are more optimistic assessments, including Intel Corporation founder Gordon Moore's famous formulation, from 1965, that "the complexity of integrated circuits has approximately doubled every year since their introduction," whereas "cost per function has decreased several thousand-fold"--which explains why personal computers, among other items, have become increasingly more powerful and yet less expensive. Anyone interested in the development of 20th-century science, applied or theoretical, will delight in Rhodes's collection. --Gregory McNamee

From the Publisher:

10 1.5-hour cassettes

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0684839032
• ISBN 13: 9780684839035
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400