Lienhard 2
1900 postcard of a summer holiday at the north pole
comparable example: driverless cars
This chapter looks at the period just before the big change around 1900
technology was beginning to change the world, but it hasn't fully sunk in with the general public
there were lots of new technologies but it wasn't yet clear which ones will be successful
Technologies are not inevitable or predictable:
Why did people not see what was coming?  Why is the future development of technology so hard to predict?
racing clipper ships
racing clipper ships
How easy is it to come up with new technology? That varies depending on:
People in the 1890s couldn't see a major change coming, can we?
Can you predict tipping points?

Perhaps the fundamental change was the putting into place of systems that inventors could rely on
Infrastructure:current infrastructure funding gap
once you have infrastructures and readily available materials, technological change can happen more quickly
more technologies start to succeed

iron and steel were the defining new material--they made it possible to do all sorts of new things
San Francisco cable cars
Currier
          and Ives Print of the Brooklyn Bridge
conditions for the survival of a new technology (p. 35)
Frank Baum (Wizard of Oz author) wrote a book about the dangers of technology called The Master Key: An Electrical Fairy Tale

technology is developed by people, it doesn't follow some necessary logic of one technology leading to another
some future predictions from a 2014 survey
to look at what is going to come next:
what do they have?
what do they need?
what new is coming

demand pull--need results in new inventions
technology push--somebody invents something and creates a new need

Demand pull:
More future predictions and more recent



This page written and copyright Pamela E. Mack
HIST 1220
last modified 9/24/18