Narratives and Spaces: Technology and the Construction of American Culture

Capa
Columbia University Press, 1997 - 224 páginas

Nye analyzes the transformation of the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls into tourist sites, the history of light shows at world's fairs, the New Deal programs designed to provide electricity to rural areas, and the Apollo 11 moon to reveal how the spaces we live in and the technology we use are integral to American identity, and a key part of American self-representation. Nye also turns his attention to the Internet, where technology has not simply transformed space, but created a whole new kind of space, and with it, new stories.
Nye analyzes the transformation of the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls into tourist sites, the history of light shows at world's fairs, the New Deal programs designed to provide electricity to rural areas, the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the new narratives of the Internet to reveal how the spaces we live in and the technology we use are integral to American identity, and a key part of American self-representation. In examining the interaction of technology, space, and American narrative, Nye argues against the idea that technology is an inevitable and insidious controller of our lives.

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Conteúdo

Introduction
1
SPACES
11
Constructing Nature Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon
13
Electrifying the American West 18801940
25
Domestic Landscape Wright Morriss The Home Place
45
NARRATIVES
59
Reconstructing Rural Space Four Narratives of New Deal Electrification
61
Energy Narratives
75
Electrifying Expositions 18801939
113
European SelfRepresentations at the New York Worlds Fair of 1939
129
Dont Fly Me to the Moon The Public and the Apollo Space Program
147
Postmodernism and the Computer Society
161
CONCLUSION
177
Technology and the Construction of American Space
179
NOTES
191
INDEX
219

Space of the Past E L Doctorows Worlds Fair
93
NARRATIVES IN SPACE
111

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Sobre o autor (1997)

David E. Nye is professor of American history at Odense University.

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