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Visions of Technology collects writings on events from the Great Exposition of 1900 and the invention of the telegraph to the advent of genetic counseling and the defeat of Garry Kasparov by IBM's chess-playing computer, Deep Blue. The book contains 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, and 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. It also includes Henry Ford on the horseless carriage, Robert Caro on the transformation of New York City, J. Robert Oppenheimer on science and war, and Loretta Lynn on the Pill.… (more)
User reviews
The grouping of the various presentations in these temporal epochs allows the reader to see how some attitudes about science and technology evolved and changed as the century progressed, how other attitudes either stayed the same or disappeared altogether, and how others, not present at the start of the century arose and spread.
For me, this was one of those books you read for a while and then put aside and reflect on what it was you read. If you are interested in science and technology and would like to see what individuals from very diverse backgrounds think and have thought about these subjects as they relate to 20th Century society I think you will find this a worthwhile read.