Hughes: Technology as Machine

• Discusses the rise of technology beginning from the Industrial Revolution (19th Century) to the present. Hughes notions towards the perception that "some Americans envisioned mechanization transforming uncultivated lands into a pastoral landscape" in some Edenic restoration.
• However, this is contrasted by the attitudes adopted by areas such as New York in the 20th Century, as technology, most notably the harnessing of electricity is used as " a means to transform industrial cities into handsome financial, commercial and cultural metropolis,  symbolic of the human built world reflecting our interests and needs.
• Interesting to note is his "Faustian Technology" section, in which Hughes details the disruptive effect technology has had on natural and cultural traditions and mentions the perception of technology as negative due to the dismissal of the restorative nature which was in the progress of being realised in the 19th century.
• "Nature is the infinitely diverse creator of organic focus ... an environment withdrawing from human impact".