A Common Relation With the Future

David Nye, writer of Technology Matters, presents his readers with a series of information about technology that is intended to stimulate his reader’s opinions. Throughout his book, Nye uses several different types of strategies to accomplish his goal of challenging his readers to think critically about technology. One of these strategies is to use several different stakeholders to show the perspectives he wants clear about technology. Two examples of stakeholders Nye uses in his book were Frederick Winslow Taylor, writer of The Principles of Scientific Management, and Richard O. Davies, writer of The Age of Asphalt: The Automobile, the Freeway, and the Condition of Metropolitan America. Taylor and Davies both discuss ways of alternative thinking towards technology.

Taylor uses The Principles of Scientific Management to educate to public about the use of science to create a more efficient society with technology. Taylor believed that for maximum success, everything must work in unison. Taylor explained this meaning when he wrote “…for each employee mans not only higher wages…development of each man to his state of maximum efficiency and the highest grade of work for which his natural abilities fit him” (9). He explained how every job had “one best way” and when done correctly, success will come about. To accomplish the task and finding the “one best way” to get done, Taylor found that scientific management would be the best decision. “It is the combination of the initiative of the workmen, coupled with the new types of work done by the management that makes scientific management so much more efficient than the old plan” (37). When combining my opinion’s of technology and Taylor’s opinions on the scientific management, I see how the two, when working at a even rate, can help progress society. Having proper management and correct technological training, the chance of failure seems to become reduced.

When observing Richard O. Davies The Age of Asphalt: The Automobile, the Freeway, and the Condition of Metropolitan America, technology in the form of transportation is looked at a closer view. Davies produced his book to explain the steps taken to construct and more efficient transportation system. Although we take such things as freeways for granted, the creation of the United States highway systems was very complicated. Technology fifty years ago was not even close to what it is today, and for that reason the education that people had about technology was not detailed. Davies staged his argument in this preface about the lack of knowledge people had about technology in the past. “When the nation opted for the freeway system as the means for transportation needs during the mid-fifties, few Americans thought in terms of possible exhaustion of energy sources, or even about environmental impact” (xi). Knowledge of technology is essential towards making the right choices for ourselves. I believe Davies, who wrote his book in the mid-seventies, was ahead of the game for which we know today. Davies knew the possibilities that could happen to the automobile if our energy sources were worn out and how our planet could be destroyed be the toxins.

I believe Nye used these two sources to escalate the importance of finding the best way and most efficient way to use technology. Having technology isn’t good enough, knowing the knowledge to use technology correctly, in my opinion, is the most important thing. Technology, when knowing the correct uses, can make life far easier and organized. In Nye’s Technology Matters, the sentence that best described using technology correctly was about Taylor’s scientific management. “He organized individual tasks into a rational sequence, so that work flowed evenly. Those who cooperated produced more” (115). Nye and Taylor’s agreement of technology shows how Nye uses his stakeholders to the fullest. I believe Nye used these two stakeholders very well in giving the reader the most information needed to understand his views on technology. Nye saw these two stakeholders as giving light to the “one best way” and understanding why technology must be used appropriately. Stakeholders that Nye left out were the people who want technology to substitute for human labor in factories and other work places. These types of stakeholders are looking for pure mechanical work, without the chance of human error. Although stakeholders who hold this view may be different from Nye’s and Taylor’s views on technology, both have positives and negatives.

When selecting a topic for my research paper, I decided writing on the progress being made in alternative technologies for transportation. Taylor and Davies opened up doors for possible further explanation, for example taking Taylor’s idea of scientific management and then plugging that into what Davies’ idea of working with changing forms of transportation to help Americans of the future. Stakeholders that will assist in my research are exploring the many experiments being done in finding new forms of technology in transportation. Examples of stakeholders that could assist me are the EPA, U.S. Department of Energy, and possibly finding those who oppose alternative technologies to view all sides of the topic.