September 20, 1999
Visions of Technology
| Richard Rhodes, winner of the Pulizter Prize for The Making of
the Atomic Bomb, has assembled a collection of writings on technology
spanning the 20th Century and vividly illustrating the both the range of
thinking on the subject and its evolution over the past 100 years. Visions
of Technology was published by Simon and Schuster earlier this year.
It is the latest volume in the Sloan Technology Series, sponsored by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Contained in this volume are quotes, some just a few lines, others several pages long, reflecting views on technology of personalities from Henry Ford and Orville Wright to Graham Nash and Spiro Agnew. Below are a few selections that I found particularly engaging, followed by a number of relevant links. Page numbers refer to Rhodes's book. |
| Tomorrow, if not today, the woman
who is to be really mistress of her house must be an engineer, so far as
to be able to understand the use of machines.
Ellen Swallow Richards (first woman
to earn
a B.S. degree from MIT, 1910, p. 54) |
| I really believe that the aeroplane will help peace
in more ways than one--in particular I think it will have a tendency to
make war impossible.
Orville Wright, 1907 (p.66)
|
| Whereas dial telephones are more
difficult to operate than are manual telephones; and
Whereas senators are required since the installation of dial telephones in the Capitol to perform the duties of telephone operators in order to enjoy the benefits of telephone service. . . Resolved that the sergeant-at-arms of the Senate is authorized and directed . . . to replace with manual telephones. . . all dial telephones in the Senate wing of the United States Capitol and in the Senate Office Building. Resolution introduced by Sen.Carter
Glass of Virginia, 1930 (p. 106)
Note: The resolution was approved. |
| Tomorrow does not smell. The World's Fair of
1939 has taken the body odor out of man, among other things.
E.B. White, 1939 (p. 136)
|
| For progress there is no cure.
Any attempt to find automatically safe channels for the present explosive
variety of progress must lead to frustration. The only safety possible
is relative, and it lies in an intelligent exercise of day-to-day judgment.
John von Neumann, 1955 (p. 205)
|
| Nearly everyone believes, falsely, that technology
is applied science. It is becoming so, and rapidly, but through most of
history science has arisen from problems posed for intellectual solution
by the technicians's more intimate experience of the behavior of matter
and mechanisms.
Cyril Stanley Smith, 1981 (p.
331)
|
| Trying to assess the true importance
and function of the Net now is like asking the Wright brothers at Kitty
Hawk if they were aware of the potential of American Airlines Advantage
Miles.
Bran Ferren (Chief Disney Imagineer,
1997, p. 370)
|
Links:Review of Visions of Technology in the American Library Association's "Booklist" (December 15, 1998)
Review of Visions of Technology in "Tucson Weekly" (March 8, 1999)
Essay on Visions of Technology by Jon Katz on "Slashdot" (March 21, 1999)
Biography of Ellen Swallow Richards on MIT Alumni site
Biography of Senator Carter Glass on "Woodrow: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis"
Biography of John von Neumann on Virginia Tech site
Images from the 1939 New York World's Fair from collector Curtis S. D. MacDonald
Dr. Bruce Umbaugh's course on "Philosophy and Films: Visions of Technology" at Webster University
