Technology has been the blessing and the bane of the 20th Century. Human life-span has nearly doubled in the West, but no century ever killed more human beings with new technologies than this. New technology became part of the machine of war, ranging from the staggering loss of life of the First World War to the media spectacle which brought the war in the Gulf into our living rooms. Improvements in agriculture have fed increasing billions, but now pesticides and chemicals threaten to poison the Earth. Richard Rhodes attempts to answer some fundamental questions arising from the prominence which technology plays in all of our lives. These problems and paradoxes have stirred impassioned debate, yet despite the central role technology has played in this century, VISIONS OF TECHNOLOGY is the first book to represent the rich diversity of commentary about this vital subject. This provocative treasury hightlights the views of the century's most prominent technological figures from Henry Ford, H.G. Wells, Rachel Carson and Albert Einstein to Aldous Huxley and John Glenn. As the cultural ambivalence towards technology takes us into the next century, Richard Rhodes provides a timely forum of debate about machines, systems and the human world.

Author Biography

Richard Rhodes is the author of several books. He received the Pulitzer prize for THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB and the History of Science Society's Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize for DARK SUN. He has received numerous fellowships for research and writing, including grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation Program in International Peace and Security and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard and MIT and a host and correspondent for documentaries on public television's Frontline and American Experience series. He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.