SOCA02H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 22: Ozone Depletion, Thomas Edison, Overconsumption
Document Summary
Scholars interested in the relationship between technology and society recognize that the bombing of hiroshima divided the 20th century into 2 distinct periods: the era of naive optimism (before hiroshima) Technology: the application of scientific principles to the improvement of human life. Most people regarded technologists with reverence and awe: the era of pessimism. Evident 3 weeks before hiroshima, when the world"s first nuclear bomb exploded at the alamogordo bombing range in new mexico. In the postwar years a growing number of people have come to share doubts about nuclear energy and technology in general. It was only in the 1970s that a series of horrific disasters alerted many people to the fact that technological advance is not always beneficial or benign. By the mid-1980s, charles perrow referred to the disasters as normal accidents: accidents that occur inevitably though unpredictably because of the very complexity of modern technologies.
