Human-Built World — by Thomas P. Hughes
Technology and Culture
Reviewed by Michael Pastore
Human-Built World is a concise history that elucidates technology's essential movements, eras, inventions, thinkers, and ideas. In this balanced treatment of the genie's benefits and perils, Hughes describes the visions of cheerleaders and skeptics as diverse as Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Beard, Henry Adams, Lewis Mumford, Oswald Spengler, Marcel Duchamp, Margaret Mead, Margaret Bourke-White, Leo Marx, and John Cage. Technology is the focus, but always in relationship to something significant: nature, religion, art, or the quality of human life. First trained as an engineer, Hughes values the creativity in the technological effort, and believes that machines can lead us to a better life. But his enthusiasm is neither blind nor naive. Hughes has listened to, and learned from, technology's harshest critics. The result -- his vision for an ecotechnological environment -- is a sane, realistic, and inspiring bridge between the impractical neo-Luddites and the reckless technophiles.
Read more ...
Reviewed by Michael Pastore
Human-Built World is a concise history that elucidates technology's essential movements, eras, inventions, thinkers, and ideas. In this balanced treatment of the genie's benefits and perils, Hughes describes the visions of cheerleaders and skeptics as diverse as Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Beard, Henry Adams, Lewis Mumford, Oswald Spengler, Marcel Duchamp, Margaret Mead, Margaret Bourke-White, Leo Marx, and John Cage. Technology is the focus, but always in relationship to something significant: nature, religion, art, or the quality of human life. First trained as an engineer, Hughes values the creativity in the technological effort, and believes that machines can lead us to a better life. But his enthusiasm is neither blind nor naive. Hughes has listened to, and learned from, technology's harshest critics. The result -- his vision for an ecotechnological environment -- is a sane, realistic, and inspiring bridge between the impractical neo-Luddites and the reckless technophiles.
Read more ...
<< Home