Abstract

Rhetorical study of technology will benefit from a broad view of technology that considers it as a cultural phenomenon, including epistemic, artifactual, technical, economic, aesthetic, and political aspects. To understand twentieth-century American technology this way, it is useful to gain some historical perspective on its development, particularly in the past 50 years. Many accounts mark World War II as a turning point in the role of technology in our culture and in the relations of technology with government, science, and industry. This article synthesizes some of these accounts and concludes with four ways that technology should prove to be rhetorically distinct from science.