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Informationen zum Autor Howard P. Segal is Bird Professor of History at the University of Maine, where he has taught since 1986. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University. His previous books include Technological Utopianism in American Culture (1985) , Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America (1994), Technology in America: A Brief History (1989, 1999, with Alan Marcus), and Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford's Village Industries (2005). He also reviews for, among other publications, Nature and the Times Higher Education . Klappentext The term utopia typically conjures up naive, impractical, and superficial notions of a perfect society. This book offers a less stereotyped and more complex view of utopias - of their history, their varying manifestations, and their reflection of the societies from which they hail. Segal connects past to present utopianism, from the first utopias in ancient Greece, through their flourishing in the Renaissance to the famous 'dystopias' of Orwell, Huxley, and Zamyatin in the twentieth-century, and right up to present-day high tech and virtual utopias. The book explores the many genres in which utopianism has expressed itself - prophecies and oratory, writings, political movements, world's fairs, physical communities, and cyberspace communities. The book shows that, far from an exclusively Western enterprise, utopias have been worldwide, appearing in regions such as Latin America and Asia. With the current strong interest in utopias, now conceived as cyberspace paradises or as the result of high-tech advances, this book offers a timely appraisal of the joys and pitfalls of utopian thought. Zusammenfassung This brief history connects the past and present of utopian thought! from the first utopias in ancient Greece! right up to present day visions of cyberspace communities and paradise. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface xi Introduction 1 1 The Nature of Utopias 5 Utopias Defined 5 Utopias Differ from both Millenarian Movements and Science Fiction 8 Utopias' Spiritual Qualities are Akin to those of Formal Religions 9 Utopias'Real Goal: Not Prediction of the Future but Improvement of the Present 12 How and When Utopias are Expected to be Established 13 2 The Variety of Utopias 16 The Global Nature of Utopias: Utopias are Predominantly but not Exclusively Western 16 The Several Genres of Utopianism: Prophecies and Oratory, Political Movements, Communities, Writings, World's Fairs, Cyberspace 24 3 The European Utopias and Utopians and Their Critics 47 The Pioneering European Visionaries and Their Basic Beliefs: Plato's Republic and More's Utopia 47 Forging the Connections Between Science, Technology, and Utopia 50 The Pansophists 53 The Prophets of Progress: Condorcet, Saint-Simon, and Comte 55 Dissenters from the Ideology of Unadulterated Scientific and Technological Progress: Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and William Morris 58 The Expansive Visions of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier 60 The "Scientific"Socialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 66 4 The American Utopias and Utopians and Their Critics 74 America as Utopia: Potential and Fulfillment 74 The Pioneering American Visionaries and their Basic Beliefs in America as Land of Opportunity: John Adolphus Etzler, Thomas Ewbank, and Mary Griffith 78 America as "Second Creation": Enthusiasm and Disillusionment 81 5 Growing Expectations of Realizing Utopia in the United States and Europe 89 Later American Technological Utopians: John Macnie Through Harold Loeb 89 Utopia Within Sight: The American Technocracy Crusade 96 Utopia Within Reach: "The Best and the Brightest"-Post-World War II Science and Te...
