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This is the story of a seductive idea. Over the past century, the potential of new technology to solve social dilemmas has captivated modern culture. From apps that encourage physical activity to airport scanners meant to prevent terrorism, the concept that clever innovation can improve society is irresistible, but faith in such technological fixes is seldom questioned. Where did this idea come from, what makes it so appealing, and how does it endanger our future?
Techno-Fixers traces the source of modern confidence in technology to engineering hubris, radical utopian movements, science fiction fanzines, policy-makers' soundbites, corporate marketing, and optimistic consumer culture from the turn of the twentieth century until today. Sean Johnston demonstrates that, through the promotion of prominent government scientists, technocrats, entrepreneurs, and popular media, modern invention became the favourite tool for addressing human problems and society's ills. Nonetheless, when it comes to assessing the success of cigarette filters as the solution to safe smoking, or DDT as the answer for agricultural productivity, the evidence is sobering. Cautioning that the rhetoric of technological fixes seldom matches reality, Johnston examines how employing innovation to bypass traditional methods can foster as many problems as it solves.
A critical examination of modern faith in technology, Techno-Fixers evaluates past mistakes, present implications, and future opportunities for innovating societies.
"Johnston summarizes his work as a warning against the rhetoric of technological hubris: we must view with skepticism "evangelists for numerous miraculous technological cures." The point is well made, but the book, inadvertently, makes another sobering one … we realise that there was a time when the President of the United States was advised by such distinguished scientists as I.I. Rabi, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, Jerome Wiesner, who became President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Alvin Weinberg. In 2020, no such person briefed Donald Trump." IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
"Modern society and its technologies have become mutually dependent, but it is time to temper the torrid love affair. Johnston surveys genetic engineering and concerns about genetically modified foods among the many other examples of failures in his comprehensive look at the problems associated with the unbridled use of the tech fix." Winnipeg Free Press
"Sean Johnston has written an innovative study of a movement that has become a dominant feature of the modern world's obsession with technology. This is an important story that will be of interest to historians of technology, economic and cultural historians, and anyone worried about the current state of affairs." Peter J. Bowler, Queen's University Belfast and author of A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H.G. Wells to Isaac Asimov