Technology and Its Discontents
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10820208 |
|---|---|
| Authors | George O'Har, George O’Har (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 479-485 |
| Publication date | 2004-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Technology and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-165X • E-ISSN: 1097-3729 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/tech.2004.0083 |
| OpenAlex | W2011156989 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Samuel C. Florman, a civil engineer and author well known for his deep admiration of good engineering and for defending technology against its detractors in works like The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, Blaming Technology, and The Introspective Engineer, has produced what he calls a "survival" tale, but which is, in fact, a utopian novel of the old school. The story line of The Aftermath (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001) is straightforward: a comet has struck Earth, leaving civilization in ruins and plunging a handful of survivors into a new Stone Age. But readers expecting a typical disaster tale will be disappointed; this is a kind of parable, designed to show that if engineers ("the new utopians," in Robert Boguslaw's term) are put in charge technology can help make things right again, especially if those doing the righting remain aware of previous wrong turns—a point Florman heightens by making his narrator a historian of technology. The Aftermath is not so much about people surviving a global catastrophe as it is about how they survive it
Admiration · Art · Charge (physics) · Civilization · Epistemology · Existentialism · Introspection · Literature · Political science · Sociology · History · Law · Philosophy · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life
| Citations per year | 0.21 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2024 (13) |
| Highly cited | No |