ABSTRACT
Americans often hold conflicting images of technology and its role in the history of the United States. In particular, many people look nostalgically upon the world before factories and mega-cities as a time of harmony with nature, close-knit communities, and hard but satisfying work. This romantic impulse to critique the modern world by finding a lost paradise in the past has been a common response since the beginnings of industrialization. Others adopt an opposite response that is equally as old. These ‘modernists’ see the traditional world as insecure and, for the vast majority, impoverished, requiring unrelenting labor to survive, and making people paranoid and superstitious.
