The Machine in the Garden
by Leo Marx · first published 1964
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"For over four decades, Leo Marx's work has focused on the relationship between technology and culture in 19th- and 20th-century America. His research helped to define - and continues to enrich - the area of American studies concerned with the links between scientific and technological advances, and the way society and culture both determine these links. The Machine in the Garden fully examines the differences between the "pastoral" and "progressive" ideals that characterized early 19th-century American culture, and which ultimately evolved into the basis for many of the environmental and nucl
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I was surprised to see no mention of Leo Marx's: The Machine in the Garden, because that's probably the most canonical book on exactly what the article talks about, the idealization of pastoral life in America[1]. As the blog post hints at it's not really limited to programmers…
on “Cottagecore Programmers” ↗…field. The Tentacles of Progress --- how technology lends itself to imperialism, and furthers exploitation, even when other nations fund the development of infrastructure in developing nations. The Machine in the Garden --- possibly the single most important book on this list, the one that turned my life upside down and which I think about most regularly. It posits that America's idyll of a tech-free natural scene is…
on “Ask PG/HN: Recommended reading on the history of technology” ↗…compared to all the sheep on soma and sex. If someone wrote this book today you would think they have listened to too much talk radio, and I think it's one of the best examples of what Leo Marx called 'the machine in the garden' myth.[1] the anxiety of (predominantly anglosphere) authors that technology and industrialization disrupt their naturalistic and God given, pastoral community. I think I might be one of the few people…
on “Remembering Huxley's “Brave New World”” ↗I think both fit very well within the trope that Leo Marx when talking about American literature called the Machine in the Garden[1] myth. It's a sort of story in which authors long for pastoral, naturalistic settings that are small scale and untouched by machinery, and so forth. This is both found in Orwell's democratic Socialism…
on “On Tolkien and Orwell” ↗…in the English speaking world. One reason is Orwell's inherent technophobia and parochialism which is arguably the dominant theme in American and English speculative fiction, what Leo Marx dubbed 'the Machine in the Garden' myth. It's about the idea of modernity, industrialization and urban society intruding an idealized agrarian culture. You find in in LOTR, Brave New World, 1984 with its waxing over natural chocolate…
on “All Is Orwell” ↗…more. I'd argue there's a subtler reading here. What makes a "technology company" changes over time. Railroad companies were very much technology companies. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_in_the_Garden : "The title of the book refers to a trope in American literature representing the interruption of pastoral scenery by technology due to the industrialization of America during the 19th and 20th century."…
on “Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not” ↗…structures which explores their forms over time, how those forms affect the whole, strengths/weaknesses, etc is criticism and not much different than works of literary criticism like Closure in the Novel, The Machine in the Garden or Mimesis which all take one aspect of literature and explore its different executions and forms; the ending, technology v nature, and reality respectively. *Music theory is largely a written discipline—a…
on “The Case for Software Criticism” ↗