• before 1930: technologies were often developed in different ways for rural use
• 1930s: government and farm organizations pushed modernization, but there was significant resistance
  
• 1940s: war disrupted supply but meant a new need for labor saving technology--began to give farmer more reason to choose urban techologies
  
• 1950s: most rural people too had become dependent on technology
• 1960s:  most people had telephone, automobile, radio, and electricity

rural people picked and chose what they wanted from modernity in values as well as in technology

An excellent summary point from a student: "Kline reiterates that Consumers All was wrong in saying that technologies were powerful irresistible social forces since farmers were selective with technology and created their own individual modernities."

the REA was abolished in 1994
was government intervention really needed?

• New Deal
• capitalism often comes out unfairly
• government can help everyone have a fair chance
• working with co-ops reduced the role of government, but government had lots of rules in return for loans
• was this pushing a technology before the farmers needed it?
• farmers wanted some electricity, lights and radio
• they didn't want to spend the money to use very much
  

(also from a student) What would the ruralization of urban life look like?

Luddite:

• modern--someone who refuses to accept new technologies
• historical--people in England who made stockings at home and organized to burn down factories when the work started being done by machine