Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title
Americans today often associate scientific and technological change with
progress and personal well-being. Yet underneath our confident
assumptions lie serious questions. In Inventing Ourselves Out of Jobs?
Amy Sue Bix locates the origins of this confusion in the Great
Depression, when social and economic crisis forced many Americans to
re-examine ideas about science, technology, and progress. Growing fear
of "technological unemployment"--the idea that increasing mechanization
displaced human workers--prompted widespread talk about the meaning of
progress in the new Machine Age. In response, promoters of technology
mounted a powerful public relations campaign: in advertising, writings,
speeches, and World Fair exhibits, company leaders and prominent
scientists and engineers insisted that mechanization ultimately would
ensure American happiness and national success.
Emphasizing the cultural context of the debate, Bix concentrates on
public perceptions of work and technological change: the debate over
mechanization turned on ideology, on the way various observers in the
1930s interpreted the relationship between technology and American
progress. Although similar concerns arose in other countries, Bix
highlights what was unique about the American response: "Discussion
about workplace change," she argues, "became entwined with particular
musings about the meaning of American history, the western frontier, and
a sense of national destiny." In her concluding chapters and epilogue,
Bix shows how the issue changed during World War II and in postwar
America and brings the debate forward to show its relevance to modern
readers.
