History of American Technology

Some of what we've been reading has dealt with the early days of technology in this country. In particular, Pursell's book talks about early technology having essentially four features:

(1) Almost everything was made by hand or with hand-driven tools.
(2) Almost everything was built one at a time.
(3) Almost everything was made of wood or natural cloth - rare were items that weren't.
(4) Almost everything was made the same way it had been done for generations, if not centuries, with little change or innovation.

Think about this list and what we have in today's world. What difference would it make to today's world if any or all of these items were still true?

When I think about this list of how things were in the past as far as technology goes it surprises me to realize how irrelevant this list is today in view of our current technology and advances. Almost nothing that is around today in our age of technology even closely resembles how it was then at all. We do very little by hand, we produce in huge quantities, we make very little of wood or natural cloth, and instead we have turned to artificial materials such as plastics. We also see a huge influx of ideas and changes in our technology; it seems rare to find things made the same way after few years much less generations. Take computers for example, every few months technology companies come out with some new advance that improves, or at least hopes to improve, the technology of our computers. It’s hard to imagine a time that things were so different.

What differences would it make is some of these things were still true today? If we didn’t have factories for mass production, if we had to do everything by hand we would probably see a much larger social gap in society, the rich would have things and the poor would have nothing because they couldn’t afford the high prices that everything would still have. As far as the resources used to produce products, in some ways it might be better if we were not so dependent on plastics and artificial products, the pollution would be less at least. At the same time though, we wouldn’t have so many technological advances and opportunities without these new resources either.

I suppose the good far exceeds the bad as far as all of our advances but the fact that those goods that are still produced by hand, with the original resources such as wood and cloth are still valued by many and most often prices very highly show that as a society we still respect and value these traditions.