Human-Built World: How to Think
about Technology and Culture
(science * culture) by Thomas P.
Hughes
Moving Technology To The Forefront Of History
To most people, technology has been reduced to computers, consumer
goods, and military weapons; we speak of technological progress in terms
of RAM and CD-ROMs and the flatness of our television screens. In
Human-Built World, thankfully, Thomas Hughes restores to technology the
conceptual richness and depth it deserves by chronicling the ideas about
technology expressed by influential Western thinkers who not only
understood its multifaceted character but who also explored its creative
potential.

Hughes draws on an enormous range of literature, art, and architecture to
explore what technology has brought to society and culture, and to explain
how we might begin to develop an ecotechnology that works with, not
against, ecological systems. From the Creator model of development of
the sixteenth century to the big science of the 1940s and 1950s to the
architecture of Frank Gehry, Hughes nimbly charts the myriad ways that
technology has been woven into the social and cultural fabric of different
eras and the promises and problems it has offered. Thomas Jefferson, for
instance, optimistically hoped that technology could be combined with
nature to create an Edenic environment; Lewis Mumford, two centuries
later, warned of the increasing mechanization of American life.
Such divergent views, Hughes shows, have existed side by side,
demonstrating the fundamental idea that in its variety, technology is full of
contradictions, laden with human folly, saved by occasional benign deeds,
and rich with unintended consequences. In Human-Built World, he offers
the highly engaging history of these contradictions, follies, and
consequences, a history that resurrects technology, rightfully, as more
than gadgetry; it is in fact no less than an embodiment of human values.
Personal Review: Human-Built World: How to Think about
Technology and Culture (science * culture) by Thomas P.
Hughes
Thomas Parker Hughes, scholar, professor, and author, has dedicated
himself "to better [understanding] the complexity of technology and its
multiple uses."(1) Hughes believes Americans construe technology too
broadly. In "Human-Built World" Hughes defines technology "as a mode of
creation"(177) and he expands on the theme that "humans have been
engaged in creating a living and working place."(179)
Technology is the main thread in his history, but technology does not
determine history's course. For better or worse that is left to society.
Particularly in relation to the environment, Hughes concedes the century of
technological enthusiasm is in the beginning stage of deterioration. The
human-built world is now in trouble, but society may respond appropriately
and respond with an "ecotechnological" answer. According to Hughes
"using technology to recover the Edonic state is a message entirely
appropriate for our ecologically concerned times."(43) Society has to take
on the responsibility, but whether technology's ecological legacy can be
redressed, remains an open question.
In Human-Built World Hughes observes that enthusiasm toward a
technologically based world diminished between World War I and II.
Hughes theorizes that the human-built world did not become a paradise is
due more to "negative political and social values and structures, than to a
failure in rational cooperation."(37) At a time when "artists and the
concerned public have begun to doubt the completely human-built world

can respond to human needs and aspirations," managing the systems-age
is a "major societal challenge."(12) This tension Hughes hopes may be
resolved in the "ecotechnological world."(152) Hughes is optimistic that
technology can solve the problem; he is just not sure that society is
technically literate enough to do it.
Therefore one of Hughes' objectives is to increase the "technological
literacy of Americans"(15); to inform and motivate people toward greater
public participation to counter what he sees as the "the Burden" of
technology.(168) Hughes is optimistic that a socio-technical systems
answer may be the key to surmounting technology's negative legacy. With
a clarity of purpose, Hughes frequently explains what he is doing, enabling
the reader to follow his logic. His tone and style of writing fits his audience
and his purpose. Hughes' effort to make history more appealing to a wider
audience is admirable.
While Hughes wants "to move...[technology] from the periphery to toward
the center stage of history,"(181) a technologically based future is
uncertain. If society fails to rise to the challenge, the role of technology will
remain at the periphery rather than on center stage.
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