Hughes Synthesis

Hughes Synthesis

Katie Hill – EDUC 628

In “Human Build World: How to Think About Technology and Culture,” Thomas Hughes provides a detailed description of the history of technology and its impact on the culture of today. As Hughes examines the many facets of technology, he focuses specifically on the American and German cultures and their adoption and utilization of emerging technologies throughout the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries as well as a few short depictions of the Twenty-First Century as the book was published in 2004. The areas of art and architecture are historically documented and illustrated by Hughes to bring forth the direct connections that these fields derived from technology that is not evident to most of us living in the technologically centered modern world. As Hughes works his way through a history of technology, he causes the reader to examine the impact that technology has had on morality, industrialization, bureaucracy, and many other systems and organizations that still remain vital and thriving today.

What was Hughes' goal in writing this book? The last paragraph in chapter 6 provides a rationale -- a call to action -- but what's his goal?

Hughes has worked his way through his book with little commentary on the historical facts and cultural trends that have defined American and German life for these past 200 years that makes up an overwhelming majority of Hughes’ work. However, when reading the last paragraph of the book in Chapter 6, his true purpose and meaning finally appears to readers and allows the connection to be made between his many historical examples and insights. A call for an “ecotechnological environment” is made by Hughes who feels that those of us living and thriving in a world many times centered around technology have the moral obligation to create and sustain in order to protect our delicate environment from further damage caused by industrialization and mechanization often made possible by our technological advancements.

The final three sentences of Hughes’ book tell the story behind his idea of an ecotechnological environment, and why it is vital for humans to adopt a similar idea. “A change in values and an activist stance toward technological change will be an effective response to these pressing problems. Such a value change and activism will not come about however, unless a technology is better understood. This book is intended to provide such an understanding,” is a call for readers to take the knowledge acquired through Hughes’ writings and apply it toward the dedication and commitment to change that will be required for any meaningful change in technological and ecological policy and awareness to occur in modern society. Hughes explains that without being technologically literate, humans are incapable of maintaining a world that will have the capacity to harmonize with technology to create an environmentally friendly planet that we all can enjoy. While technology is often viewed as the harsh, unyielding machines of the industrial age, Hughes states that technology can be molded and developed with a moral spirit while increasing the quality of life that we often enjoy as a result of these innovations.

In his description of the ecotechnical environment, Hughes brings forth an image that doesn’t necessarily draw a parallel with the “second creation” or “return to Eden” that he had previously written about in earlier chapters, however it does provide an ideal that this ecotechnical environment can bring about an organic quality to everything that is impacted by technology. This shift in technological values is what Hughes believes will bring the world, and namely, America, back to the balance with our environment that we once appreciated prior to the mass industrialization and lack of restraint with the production of many of our vital systems.

This ecotechnical environment is not brought about by a religious or theological movement or ideology, but by recognition of the need for “green space” by those who largely impact our culture with technology, such as architects, engineers, and artists. As much as Hughes builds some of his philosophies on religion and morality, and as much as it is mentioned in his book, it is apparently obvious in this final chapter where a modern return to Eden is an underlying theme. One can only stipulate that Hughes brings these theological ideas into view throughout the book in order to build a sense of “technological morality and values,” that has been in decline since early in the Twentieth Century with technology enthusiasts such as the Beards and others excitingly adopting technologies as quickly as they were mass produced and sold.

How effective is Hughes at exploring the human-built world? Does his definition of technology make sense?

In his opening chapter Hughes defines technology as,” craftsmen, mechanics, inventors, engineers, designers, and scientists using tools, machines, and knowledge to create and control a human-built world consisting of artifacts and systems associated mostly with the traditional fields of civil, mechanical, electrical, mining, materials, and chemical engineering,” (Hughes, 2004). As Hughes describes several other significant artists of all types in history, he discusses their definitions before finally developing a self-described overarching definition of technology as previously mentioned. There is hardly room for additions as this encompasses a vast array of practically everything, however, I believe that modifications could be made that would make Hughes’ definition more reader-friendly. For example, in the beginning of the definition, Hughes lists a specific group of professions, which although it does include a majority of those who may have a significant impact on technology, it is not inclusive of everyone that has the ability to impact technology. I also have some issues with Hughes’ notion of “control” that he refers to several times throughout the beginning of the book. Technology is definitely a method to control some things, but not all. For example, if we go back to Postman and his exploration of the notion of writing as a technology, there is an aspect of writing that controls the communication method. However, it unleashes a plethora of ideas, notions, and philosophies that cannot be contained or controlled as writing is a method of setting those ideas free. Human nature does direct us to yearn for control over our lives’, and those things that affect us, however, I think that we are intelligent enough to understand that control over everything is impossible.

When Hughes addressed the reader in the beginning of the book with his definition of technology, it does seem that several professions and materials are absent from his definition of technology, however, as one reads through Hughes’ book, it becomes clear that Hughes only lists those in his definition that he addresses or planned to address in his book. Regardless, this definition is devoid of some crucial elements that make it a complete and balanced definition of technology. Hughes must have been aware of this on some level, as the reader will find that there are also several places where Hughes interjects another view of his definition, such as on page 3 where he says, “I also see technology as a creative process involving human ingenuity.” This only comes after Hughes quotes the definitions of technology from others, which again, is a frustrating characteristic of this book that the reader may find.

The notion of a human built world is definitely one that is a valid description of the writing of Hughes here as he directs an overwhelming amount of attention toward the engineering and constructive arts which are directly concerned with building around and for humans. The history of the industrial and mechanization era are explored and commentated by Hughes in which he begins a long journey into the role that engineers and architects have played on the cultural impact of technology through their own works of art and construction. This ideology of a human-built world presented by Hughes provides a direct pathway for his writing to follow in order to build a framework for the book that allows him to build and support his argument.  

Some similar themes run through both Hughes and Postman. Are they legit? That is, do they seem to make sense?

Postman and Hughes depict technology in starkly different ways in both of their writings. While Postman is pessimistic and seemingly looks for only the disastrous consequences of technology, Hughes writes about the history of technology as it relates to engineering and the arts, and tends to portray to readers a slightly more optimistic view of technology, and the advances it has made in our culture. Both writers provide legitimate arguments in their own writings; however the reader is who provides the context that their arguments fit into. It is not until the middle of the book that Hughes begins to explore the problematic areas in which technology has caused problems for America and other cultures.

In chapter 4, Hughes makes the move from the mechanization and industrialization era to the development and utilization of systems that contribute to and shape technology. Hughes writes that “large-scale complexity” began in the time period following WWII, and that systems claimed the area of focus that machines once held firmly. Synthesis became the method of thinking instead of the dissection of hard machinery that held no real form of complication other than the inner-connectivity of its parts. The trend that technology and the evolution of ideas had followed for the past few thousands of years continued, and even accelerated with the systems era as the world became connected in countless ways and provided the average person a global perspective that at one time was often tremendously localized due to a lack of technological communication.

The era of military empowerment and the connections to industry and universities is explored and commentated by Hughes, who offers an honest and condensed version of what many feel to be the corrupt practices of the military and government during the Kennedy and post-Kennedy eras of leadership. Hughes asserts here that the large-scale systems approach was developed by the military that, during that time period, had to develop a method to keep track of and manage the many contractors and projects that were underway during the time. Because of the amount of money being spent and the government contracts that were at stake, this became an extremely sensitive subject, and caused a level of distrust in government that has never disappeared from the public’s opinion.

In this time period, the military wasn’t the only “industry” experiencing growing pains. Urban growth continued in large eastern cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and others. Civil engineers and planners determined that a systems approach that had been recently “tried out” by the military would be an answer to the problems that these cities were having. The problem that the systems approach provided for urban areas was the beginning of a complex governmental issue that we still experience today. When a task needs completion in an urban area, the multiple steps and bureaucracy that must be “conquered” is such that many simply choose not to complete a task, or the costs to complete these tasks are so great that more money is wasted on the process than the project itself. The systems approach that may have proved helpful in some circumstances has proven to cause more trouble than it’s worth in most instances.

As systems grew to become “Megasystems,” Hughes explores the idea of an information revolution, which he states is a concept too new to be defined or historically recorded. However, we can see the impact of controlling the massive amounts of information that were being generated in this new age, and that was the invention of the computer. Granted, at this point, it was not a microcomputer yet, but filled an entire room or building in some cases, and had relatively little power, even less than a low-end smart phone. However, it did impact the evolution of the information generation and control age as there had to be a method for organizing and recalling information at specific times and for specific uses.

Hughes then begins a long and exhaustive journey through the history of the computer, microcomputer, World Wide Web, and Internet, and how they have connected us locally, and finally globally. The point is made that the information revolution has “revolutionized” every aspect of our lives’, and he is mostly correct in this assumption. Once an organized and efficient method was developed to share and utilize information and data in the most advantageous ways. Businesses are now streamlined and management techniques changed in that the control of information changed the ways in which we conduct business.

Hughes then then ends the chapter with a return to Postman type of section where the downsides of this new technological era are explored. However, Hughes provides a much less negative view of technology than Postman and does not catastrophize the continued use and growth of the technological process. However, the notion of very serious consequences arise if and when the information system “hiccups” or has a breakdown altogether.

How and where does Education fit in Hughes' scheme of the human-built world? Does it? Is education a technology according to Hughes?

After reading Hughes’ discussion of systems, our underlying topic of education could be argued as a closed or “open” system, technologically speaking. Unfortunately, education has a tendency to be a very segregated area of our culture where those considered to be professionals are very traditional and resistant to changes. In this way, education could be conceived to be a closed system as very few new ideas and techniques are permitted entry into this sacred realm of humanity. Education used to be a very simplistic system as recently as 100 years ago in many areas of the world, and still is to some degree. However, as our world and culture became more complex, so did education, and its drive to meet the needs of the students, which somehow has failed, but is another discussion for another day. An open system could be defended in education because of the new strives we are making regarding distance education and the integration of technology into almost every classroom around the country. However, this was not always the case, and probably a good decision as the careful analyzation of the impacts that technology would produce on students had yet to be decided. Therefore, I feel that in many ways education is “opening” up to some new ideas and it’s a good idea since everything else we have done has seemed to fail.

This pragmatic and very controlled sense of culture was transmitted to education in many forms. First, as we learned, public television which later transitioned to educational television, took its cues from the Bauhaus School, which promoted experimenting with these “practical arts” to develop a product that was digestible for most forms of education. Who can forget Slim Goodbody, the Alphabet People, and most importantly, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood with the very terrifying and freakish land of puppets that the trolley visited every episode? (I still have nightmares about this show, and the voice that was given to the puppets is my personal idea of what hell is filled with). However, this was what was considered to be the newest and most exciting form of technology’s cultural impact, and was greeted with open arms from a tired people who had just experienced a world war which impacted tragically the lives’ of countless global inhabitants.

The world turned its focus to the operation of machines, and how we could imitate them in our own lives’ and movements. Since the world had embraced the industrial age so rapidly, that idea impacted the everyday citizens with their “boring” jobs and middle-class income, but what is so striking is that even the often socially outcast artists of the day embraced this form of thinking and began to create the many works of art and architecture that Hughes discussed at length here in Chapter 5. Functionality ruled in every way and Hughes says that, “Function dictated design,” (pg. 118). He brings an interesting point to light that in many ways this functionality brought the finer things to the middle class by mass production, which was a notion loathed by many Europeans as these goods were specifically reserved for the upper-class citizens. This is not only an idea brought on by technology, but embodied by what we have discussed as the American Sprit, that we are all deserving of happiness and the pursuit of such, and if that means mass produced goods that make life more convenient, then so be it, we are on board.

How effective do you think Hughes has been in providing an understanding of technology? 

Disappointingly, Hughes only grants current technology a few pages to describe the changes to culture. Mostly, we find that computer graphics have been the leading impact on art and architecture, as both of these functions can now be produced with little more than a cheap computer and software program. The freedom and flexibility that these computer programs offer does lend artists the ability to blend the popular architectural and artistic forms that have ruled the past 100 years to offer critics the often exciting “eye candy” which has also delivered these sophisticated arts to the masses through computer animated movies, which seem to have taken over our theatres today.

Again, it is disappointing that Hughes does not address the changes in education that modern technology’s cultural movements have provided, however they are present. As resistance to the control of mechanisms grew, so did the resistance to the very controlled and rigid structure of education. The role of education became more student centered, and has led to students as individual learners as opposed to students as groups of learners. Technology has enabled us as educators to address the needs of individual learners and encourage them to achieve at their own level regardless of that of peers. With the acceptance of radio, television, and now computers in the classroom, technology has proven that in moderation, technology of any type does serve as a relevant and effective form of lesson enhancement and provides a valuable resource to over-worked teachers. This is most likely a result of the “opening” of this educational system which has historically been reluctant to adapt to newer types of learning methods or theories.

When one thinks about the machine oriented influence on art and technology in the Twentieth Century, I think that we often think of these straight lines, bland colors, and almost “dingy” feel that the works provide to the viewer. The industrial age had a major impact on the arts and architecture as the “frills” that once accompanied most aspects of life had disappeared, and a practicality had taken over as the overwhelming way to live life and experience fulfillment. For many Germans and Americans this was the case, and we need look no further than many of our grandparents and great-grandparents as they view efficiency as the most valuable trait that a person can have. This was valued and respected in that day and time, and still is in many parts of the country, especially in rural America, where I VERY happily reside.

Hughes provides the reader with a very detailed and factual walkthrough of the history of technology that has been impacted by the changes in art, engineering, and architecture, which some readers may find fascinating. However, Hughes is misleading in the title of his book in that one may feel that a holistic view of technology is going to be provided, when in fact, only a part of technology in a part of the world is discussed in any detail. One may also find it frustrating that in the last chapter of the book, Hughes reveals that the main purpose of writing the book was to have a change on the environment where technology has impacted it in a negative manner. Perhaps it would be less of a disappointment to the reader if Hughes were to accurately title his book and provide an actual purpose to readers in the beginning chapters instead of the last paragraph of the book.