ACADEMIC ARTICLE SUMMARY
Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies
Article Source: John Hopkins University Press, 2007
Publication Date:
Time to Read: 1 minute readWritten By:
Siva VaidhyanathanTAP Scholar
Carolyn de la Peña
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ARTICLE SUMMARY
Summary:
This books looks at how technology affects people, families, war and society.
POLICY RELEVANCE
Policy Relevance:
Technology is critical to the sense of progress in the United States, but its affects are not always beneficial or well understood.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Key Takeaways:
- Contributors to the collection of essays in this book include Joel Dinerstein, Susan J. Douglas, Rayvon Fouche, Caren Kaplan, Robert MacDougall, and Carma R. Gorman.
- The aim of the book is to reassess the relationship between technology and progress in the United States. The books asks how is progress defined, how it is achieved, and for whom?
- Susan Douglas argues that technology has not resulted in a global village but has made people more ethnocentric and narcissistic.
- Rayvon Fouche describes the history of African Americans and technology.
- Caren Kaplan compares marketing and targeted selling with the smart bombs used in the first Gulf War.
- Robert MacDougall look at how technology such as the railway, the telegraphy, and the telephone affected story-telling at the end of the nineteenth century.
- Carma Gorman looks at how technology was designed between 1925 and 1950 to clean lines, and how this parallels changes in thinking about the human body.
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About Siva Vaidhyanathan
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies. He is also director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, which hosts a Democracy Lab, produces several podcasts, and the Virginia Quarterly Review magazine.
