Technology and the environment

Running Head : Technology and the Environment

Technology and the Environment

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In Hoover Dam : A Study in Domination ' environmental historian Donald Worster describes the very forces that brought the veritable wonder into existence . He notes how conventional myth making imbues the dam with the ideals of technological modernity while concealing its origins within the elite compulsion to conquer and harness the forces of nature . The dam , Worster narrates , is the result of the demands exerted by urban expansion , agricultural capitalism and overzealous engineering

What

Hoover Dam ultimately represents is the kind of rationalization that has defined industrialism throughout the 20th century : the desire to harness all natural forces towards utilitarian ends while blithely ignoring the internal logic or intrinsic value of untouched nature Furthermore , even when overlooking how development has subjugated nature towards the capital demands of special interests , Worster (73 ) finds contention with how it has also concentrated power in the hands of engineering , resulting in a human society that is becoming increasingly planned and a world where development and its agents accumulate power

[Power is not] the exclusive possession of those who profit most by environmental domination . [It] also comes to those who offer the means of conquest it comes to all the principal agents and spokesmen of instrumentalism (Worster 73

Ultimately , as a monument to engineering and natural conquest , Hoover Dam is not about man 's limitless potential but the power of few . The `better life ' we march towards is one where...