Introduction: Technology and the Modern Imagination

In this book, we interrogate that imagination and the ways we have built the imagination of technology into the world around ourselves. This book represents an ethnographic expedition in search of the core idea, perhaps the key symbol, that permits us to designate such diverse objects as video games, X-ray machines, thermonuclear weapons, space probes, electric power grids, and monumental architecture with the common denominator of “technology.” We explore and critique the near-universal faith in “progressProgress” that derives from modernist assumptions and thereby afford these objects with a common set of attitudes and a belief that they represent progress. These attitudes include respect for their usefulness, awe at their great powers, mystery in their functionality for most of the population, and certainly an expectation that these devices will make our lives more comfortable, more secure, more enjoyable, and more fulfilled. When our devices fall short of these expectations, it simply means that we must redouble our efforts: improve the design, install a more powerful microprocessor, write some new lines of code, or fine-tune the “human factor.”