Narratives of Technology by J. M. van der Laan (review)

J. M. van der Laan makes no reference to Staudenmaier’s classic, presumably because he is primarily interested in literature and popular culture (including film and advertising), not the writings of historians. [...]van der Laan rejects “the myth of technological progress, of unlimited possibility,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Technology and culture 2020, Vol.61 (1), p.344-345
Main Author: Nye, David E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Advertisements
Advertising
Agents (artificial intelligence)
Artificial intelligence
Historians
Humans
Military technology
Narratives
Popular culture
Social control
Technological change
Technology
Time compression
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Summary:J. M. van der Laan makes no reference to Staudenmaier’s classic, presumably because he is primarily interested in literature and popular culture (including film and advertising), not the writings of historians. [...]van der Laan rejects “the myth of technological progress, of unlimited possibility, and of perfectibility” as being “untrue. Consider the following ten, which do not exhaust the possibilities: technological hubris leads to spectacular failure; machines are deterministic agents of inevitable change; corporations with different technologies struggle to dominate a market; society takes technology for granted and collapses because it fails to maintain it; an Orwellian government manipulates technologies for social control at the cost of diversity and freedom; adopting a particular technology leads to the reverse of what was desired; a society uses technology to accelerate time and compress space with both beneficial and disturbing consequences; adoption of technologies proves environmentally destructive until other technologies are developed and substituted; machines with artificial intelligence seize control from mankind, leading to conflict; human beings misuse military technologies with catastrophic results; and finally the post-apocalyptic narrative, in which remnants of humanity learn to survive using simple technologies.
ISSN:0040-165X
1097-3729
1097-3729
DOI:10.1353/tech.2020.0020