Experience the future in full-scale: Technological background relations and visions of the good society at the World's Columbian Exposition

Ole Sneltvedt

Technology in Society, 2018, vol. 52, issue C, 46-53

Abstract: Do we have any means of predicting or evaluating how technological developments could contribute to a good society before they become part of everyday life? This paper turns to history for a potential answer by seeing the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition as one example of a tentative materialization of a vision of the good society supported by technological systems and artifacts. The first part of the paper provides a theoretical framework for understanding the communication of private sociotechnical visions of the good society to the public by way of full-scale models, and addresses how to evaluate such visions. Based on this framework, the paper explores the Exposition as a sociotechnical prototype, publicly enacted and experienced, and essential to insights about our own sociotechnical future.

Keywords: The good society; Political philosophy; Technology; Sociotechnical imaginaries; Public world; The Gilded Age (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:teinso:v:52:y:2018:i:c:p:46-53

DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2017.10.001

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