Utopias: A Brief History from Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities

Blackwell Brief Histories of Religion

by Howard P. Segal

This brief history connects the past and present of utopian thought, from the first utopias in ancient Greece, right up to present day visions of cyberspace communities and paradise. Explores the purpose of utopias, what they reveal about the societies who conceive them, and how utopias have changed over the centuriesUnique in including both non-Western and Western visions of utopiaExplores the many forms utopias have taken - prophecies and oratory, writings, political movements, world's fairs, physical communities - and also discusses high-tech and cyberspace visions for the first timeThe first book to analyze the implicitly utopian dimensions of reform crusades like Technocracy of the 1930s and Modernization Theory of the 1950s, and the laptop classroom initiatives of recent years

Genres: Philosophy, Utopia, History

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Howard P. Segal is Bird Professor of History at the University of Maine. He is also director of its technology and society project. His books include Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America, Technology in America: A Brief History (with Alan Marcus), and Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford's Village Industries.

Reviews

[Matthew Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read overall, but at times the author engages in too much conceptual stretching, even referring to the marketing of the Nook and Kindle e-readers as "utopian schemes". The book's strength is drawing an arc between Plato's Republic and More's Utopia to their present-day counterparts, but sometimes that arc veers off course and hurts the argument.

The book also spends too much time in the middle sections (ch. 5-6) detailing the political and social history of the technocracy movement, nuclear energy, and American R&D policy, once again seeming to veer from the utopian arc. The space and time would have been better spent examining in greater depth the various modern alternative communities--the Israeli kibbutzim (touched on only briefly), the Mexican Zapatista movement, and the community in Marinaleda, Spain, for example--and comparing them to earlier attempted communities such as Oneida or New Harmony.

All in all, worth a look...if you can avoid getting lost in the weeds in the middle.

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thoughts on the book are virtually identical to those of Matthew Smith, the only other Goodreads user to review this book to date. Overall it's a good book, but there are some seriously long-winded digressions where the reader is left wondering how this relates to utopianism. For example, there is a long section about the decline of nuclear energy.

In the beginning the author promises "to treat utopias and utopians -- and their critics -- with fairness and respect." I think he mostly succeeds in this attempt but there are some individuals and trends of which he is scarcely able to conceal his contempt.