Leo marx the machine in the garden summary

Technology and Culture
Subject
Writing

Question Description
Choose three sentences from the article attached by Leo Marx that struck you as important for our understanding of technology, and describe what they mean in relation to Marx’s argument and to your own understanding of technology in general and writing in particular.

Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept Author(s): LEO MARX Source: Technology and Culture, Vol. 51, No. 3 (July 2010), pp. 561-577 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the History of Technology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40927986 Accessed: 08-03-2018 18:12 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40927986?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms The Johns Hopkins University Press, Society for the History of Technology are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Technology and Culture This content downloaded from 54.84.104.155 on Thu, 08 Mar 2018 18:12:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ESSAYS Technology The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept LEO MARX ". . . the essence of technology is by no means anything technological." - Martin Heidegger1 New Concepts as Historical Markers The history of technology is one of those subjects that most people more about than they realize. Long before the academy recognized specialized field of scholarly inquiry, American schools were routin seminating a sketchy outline ofthat history to millions of pupils. We l about James Watt and the steam engine, Eli Whitney and the cotton g about other great inventors and their inventions. Even more import were led to assume that innovation in the mechanic arts is a - perha driving force of human history. The theme was omnipresent in my hood experience. I met it in the graphic charts and illustrations in m of The Book of Knowledge, a popular children's encyclopedia, and alluring dioramas of Early Man in the New York Museum of Natur tory. These exhibits represented the advance of civilization as a sequ the inventions in the mechanic arts with which Homo sapiens gain unique power over nature. This comforting theme remains popula and is insinuated by all kinds of historical narrative. Here, for exam passage from an anthropological study of apes and the origins of h violence: Leo Marx is Senior Lecturer and William R. Kenan Professor of American Cultu tory Emeritus in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massa Institute of Technology. An early version of this essay was delivered as the Ric Lecture at Williams College, 26 September 1996, also published in Social Research 1997): 965-88 (thanks to Social Research, www.socres.org, for allowing Techno Culture to publish this revision). ©2010 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X710/5103-0001/561-77 1. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Love« (New York, 1977), 4. 561 This content downloaded from 54.84.104.155 on Thu, 08 Mar 2018 18:12:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Our own ancestors from this line [of woodland apes] began shaping stone tools and relying much more consistently on meat around 2 million years ago. They tamed fire perhaps 1.5 million years ago. They developed human language at some unknown later time, perhaps 150,000 years ago. They invented agriculture 10,000 years ago. They made gunpowder around 1,000 years ago, and motor vehicles a century ago.2 JULY 2010 VOL. 51 This typical summary of human history from stone age tools to Ford cars illustrates the shared "scientific" understanding, circa 2010, of the history of technology. But one arresting if scarcely noted aspect of the story is the belated emergence of the word used to name the very rubric - the kind ofthing - that allegedly drives our history. The word is technology. The fact is that during all but the very last few seconds, as it were, of the ten millen- nia of recorded human history encapsulated in this account, the concept of technology - as we know it today - did not exist.