The concept of technology first appeared after the industrial revolution, expanded during the interwar period, and became generalized in the early post-war decades, reaching a point in the twentieth century where it became linked to everything - even to the possibility of our annihilation through a nuclear holocaust or environmental destruction.

This volume covers a period during which technology not only developed rapidly at many levels but also shaped a series of critical technologies in specific ways: cars, airplanes, nuclear reactors, and computers.

Why did gasoline-powered vehicles prevail over electric ones? Were wooden airplanes inferior to metal ones? Was there a universally superior design for nuclear reactors? Did the work of human computers get eliminated by the electronic computer? What was the role of the state and ideology in shaping technology in the examples above? What was the role of gender stereotypes?

The historians of technology who contribute to the essays in this volume attempt to ultimately confront a major question: Is it correct to deterministically assume that technology evolves towards 'progress,' or not?

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]