This week’s reading takes us to the core of the history
behind the revolution of machine technology, and the different forms of energy
and materials being able to be formed. The use of these materials and energy
helped transform the uncultivated land into cities and towns, and the use of
electricity and light on signs from shops and businesses attracted more people.
However not all people thought that machines would industrialise cities, but
also a new world and possibilities towards design and problem solving. Through the positives of machine and
technology also attaches the negative perspective side which was studied by a
German historian named Oswald Spengler who argues that technology was a cause
of loss of culture and tradition.
He also interestingly dwells within the
religion aspect relating to creativity and how creativity also contains a
satanic side due to its effect on humans to think that the world is built by
men, when in truth the all creating God has created all things initially.
Machine and technology are viewed as tools which humans saw as an opportunity
to gain power and change the land, and had to be mastered and controlled to use
these transcendental powers. As these industrialisations were to take place, an
sceptical critic of technology and society Lewis Mumford protested that the
forms of human-built environments should comply with the organic development in
nature in so that organic functions and human purposes may still be intact with
this world than to lose it completely.
References
Hughes, Thomas P., “Chapter
3: Technology as Machine, “ human built World: How to think about technology
and Culture(2004): 45-76.
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