3-2-18
the assembly line caught on quickly in the United States,
"where the values that the assembly line would embody were
woven into everyday life." (p. 2)
ideas about technology:
- the direction of technological progress is
not inevitable
- is it true that anything we can do we will
do?
- the wants of society determine the
direction of technological change
- a new technology comes to seem natural and
therefore inevitable when it wasn't
- Nye has an evolutionary rather than
revolutionary idea of how new technologies emerge
the development of the United States into a highly accelerated
society
- the standardization of space, selling public land quickly
by organizing
it by a grid--values of individuality and equality
- faster transportation: improved roads, canals, railroads
- faster circulation of information: telegraph, newspapers,
telephone, cinema, radio
- standardization of time via the creation of time
zones
- assembly line production and consumption
note how each change comes to be seen as
"natural"--human-technology symbiosis
so new technology comes to seem inevitable when it is not
steam cars might have won out, but their makers focused on
expensive cars
Ford did not invent the assembly line, his team of engineers
worked the idea out over time
overview
of automobile history
Modern Times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfGs2Y5WJ14
is speed necessarily the best measure of cultural progress?
is technology neutral?