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Making the Modern World
From: Science Museum
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 deas about a technological culture are increasingly embedded into our understanding of the world. We are surrounded by technological products that influence our lives and our lifestyles, and we consider ideas of technological progress and usage central to our norms, values, actions and social relations. In a sense, we can now say that Western culture is a technological culture. |
The Science Museum's Making the Modern World website (www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/index.asp) sets out to question the assumption that the creation of a technological culture is a recent phenomenon. Using examples of artefacts that have been invented, constructed and used, it embraces a historical understanding of technology and shows how central technology has been in our thinking since the Enlightenment. |
The site identifies nine transitional periods, with each period throwing up particular responses toward the impact of technology. For instance, the era of "manufacture by machine" (1800-60) illustrates the increasing power and accuracy of tools for shaping metal or weaving cotton. Other periods show that although we have developed an increasing dependence on technology, we have also become more sceptical and apprehensive about the ability of technology to improve our world. This is especially evident during the period termed "the Age of Ambivalence" (1960-2000), in which the creation of Tracy, the transgenic ewe, and the mounting necessity to use crash-test dummies to increase car safety reflect the complex relationships between technology and society. |
The site contains details and images of some of the most important advances in technological design, from Robert Stephenson's Rocket Locomotive of 1829 to Henry Ford's Model T of 1916. However, the site doesn't just aim to draw the user's attention to great technological achievements; it also outlines the significance of these achievements in people's everyday lives. From materials, transport and tableware, the website develops a rarely heard discussion about the influence of technological change in everyday life. |
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