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Visions of Technology: A Century of Vital Debate About Machines Systems and the Human World
Technology was the blessing and the bane of the twentieth century. Human life span nearly doubled in the West, but in no century were more human beings killed by new technologies of war. Improvements in agriculture now feed increasing billions, but pesticides and chemicals threaten to poison the earth. Does technology improve us or diminish us? Enslave us or make us free? With this first-ever collection of the essential twentieth-century writings on technology, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Rhodes explores the optimism, ambivalence, and wrongheaded judgments with which Americans have faced an ever-shifting world.
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. Its gems of opinion and history include Henry Ford on the horseless carriage, Robert Caro on the transformation of New York City, J. Robert Oppenheimer on science and war, Loretta Lynn on the Pill and much more. Together, they chronicle an unprecedented century of change.
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. Its gems of opinion and history include Henry Ford on the horseless carriage, Robert Caro on the transformation of New York City, J. Robert Oppenheimer on science and war, Loretta Lynn on the Pill and much more. Together, they chronicle an unprecedented century of change.
400 pages, Paperback
First published March 4, 1999
12 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
Richard Rhodes
114 books617 followersRichard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction (which he prefers to call "verity"), including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007). He has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation among others.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 25, 2024
This was an exciting way to examine the history of technology and inventions.
It was a series of short anecdotes from published authors to political figureheads and even scientists.
Each short snippet was a popular look into the different technologies of the era. The book is split chronologically and flows consistently.
It definitely doesn't make it feel like you are reading about history while you are, in fact, learning as you go.
4 Stars
It was a series of short anecdotes from published authors to political figureheads and even scientists.
Each short snippet was a popular look into the different technologies of the era. The book is split chronologically and flows consistently.
It definitely doesn't make it feel like you are reading about history while you are, in fact, learning as you go.
4 Stars
November 24, 2025
'In the past the Grand Canyon invited reflection on human insignificance, but today much of the public sees it through a cultural lens shaped by advanced technology. The characteristic questions about the canyon assume that humans dug the canyon or that they could improve it so that it might be viewed quickly and easily. Rangers re-ported repeated queries for directions to the road, the elevator, the train, the bus, or the trolley to the bottom. Other visitors request that the canyon be lighted at night. Many assume that the canyon was produced either by one of the New Deal dam-building programs or by the Indians "What tools did they use?" is a common question.'
Visions of Technology is an anthology of short writings, primarily American, on technology and technological change throughout the 20th century. With voices from proponents of technology, it's inventors or critics, or reflective writers, Rhodes charts an impressive diversity of views on technology and its impact, along with its changing viewpoints throughout the 20th century.
Several prominent themes emerge throughout the book: humans being inherently technological animals; the unprecedented, rapid, and totalizing growth of technology in the modern era; the tremendeous benefits and consequences it has brought to the world; the seemingly irreversible nature of technological discovery; and that the consequences of technologies only becoming readily apparent after its implementation. Chronologically, technological development generally invited a high degree of optimism in the early 20th century, to weariness, skepticism and criticism with the world wars and the nuclear age, to a somewhat general acceptance at the close of the century.
Taking the fact that humans went from the discovery of flight to landing on the moon in a single lifetime, the experience of technological is a fascinating topic in my eyes. With that said, there are few awed accounts in this book of everyday persons marvelling at the pace of technological change; instead, the writings are mostly reflections on its societal consequences and impacts. Generally, this points more to the fact that we are too outpaced by the rapidity of technological change to reflect on its impact, and more often adapt to new discoveries in our everyday lives without noticing. Someone may remember the year they purchased their first smartphone, but I imagine few could pinpoint its gradual encroachment into almost every aspect of everyday life. Again, as the book shows, we are more simply swept up in technological change instead of making conscious adoptions and choices. And again, the consequences only become apparent with the passage of time.
All this makes Visions of Technology an excellent read, similar in vein to All that is Solid Melts into Air in its coverage of the experience of modernity.
That said, I was suprised and dissapointed that Rhodes did not sample the writings of Ted Kaczynski, surely one of the most prominent writers on technology in the 20th century.
Visions of Technology is an anthology of short writings, primarily American, on technology and technological change throughout the 20th century. With voices from proponents of technology, it's inventors or critics, or reflective writers, Rhodes charts an impressive diversity of views on technology and its impact, along with its changing viewpoints throughout the 20th century.
Several prominent themes emerge throughout the book: humans being inherently technological animals; the unprecedented, rapid, and totalizing growth of technology in the modern era; the tremendeous benefits and consequences it has brought to the world; the seemingly irreversible nature of technological discovery; and that the consequences of technologies only becoming readily apparent after its implementation. Chronologically, technological development generally invited a high degree of optimism in the early 20th century, to weariness, skepticism and criticism with the world wars and the nuclear age, to a somewhat general acceptance at the close of the century.
Taking the fact that humans went from the discovery of flight to landing on the moon in a single lifetime, the experience of technological is a fascinating topic in my eyes. With that said, there are few awed accounts in this book of everyday persons marvelling at the pace of technological change; instead, the writings are mostly reflections on its societal consequences and impacts. Generally, this points more to the fact that we are too outpaced by the rapidity of technological change to reflect on its impact, and more often adapt to new discoveries in our everyday lives without noticing. Someone may remember the year they purchased their first smartphone, but I imagine few could pinpoint its gradual encroachment into almost every aspect of everyday life. Again, as the book shows, we are more simply swept up in technological change instead of making conscious adoptions and choices. And again, the consequences only become apparent with the passage of time.
All this makes Visions of Technology an excellent read, similar in vein to All that is Solid Melts into Air in its coverage of the experience of modernity.
That said, I was suprised and dissapointed that Rhodes did not sample the writings of Ted Kaczynski, surely one of the most prominent writers on technology in the 20th century.
August 17, 2009
An expansive collection of excerpted essays and quotations (from the U.S. and Western Europe) about the roles and impacts of technologies as varied as the car, airplane, computer and birth control. With commentors ranging from Henry Ford to Rachel Carson and beyond, one gets a real sense of the patterns of thought around technology, and the tendencies to either romanticize or demonize every new change. While thought provoking and frequently funny, there is something sobering in tracing the idea that any new technology might be what brings lasting peace to the world, whether it was the airplane in the early 20-Century, or the Internet.
September 26, 2014
Selections from texts about the impact of technology on society, from the 1800s up through the present. The early years were very interesting, but everyone in the 1960s and 70s seemed depressed about technology.
March 19, 2008
I remember very little of this. It must not have grabbed me.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews