Technology In 20th Cexntury

Technology in the 20th Century

The textbook that is utilized in this course is called "Twentieth-Century World 6th Edition" by Carter Vaugh Findley and John Alexander Murray Rothney. I personally think this textbook is more relevant to the theme of "Technology vs. Nature" because of its technological content within the first three chapters and because technology did play a large role in the development of the twentieth century. This theme is also more significant to the first three chapter of the textbook because there wouldn't be any economical and social evolutions without technology, and according to the textbook those are the main two foundations that supported the development of many nations as the United States, Great Britain and Germany.

In chapter one the textbook gives a brief clarification on the importance of the "Technology vs. Nature" theme. According to Findley and Rothney, "Only in the twentieth century, however, did scientific and technological change reach the point where it could not only set up the flows of people, money, and ideas that shape today's tightly networked world, but also fundamentally alter the balance between human societies and their natural environments"(21). The first chapter explains that technology in the twentieth century had improved public health, expanded agriculture and most of all improved our global communication network which has helped build countries from scratch to world dominance. Technology is also the reason many immorality events; for instance the invention of the mustard gas during World War I and the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 due to nuclear weapons.

Chapter two centers around the "Second Industrial Revolution". The authors wrote that "Historians also recognize a second industrial revolution, beginning around 1890, that employed new sources of energy to build and fuel new sorts of machines. The second revolution used electricity and petroleum to transform machines that had been the hobbies of eccentric investors into everyday objects of widespread use" (30-31). Technology played a huge role in the second industrial revolutionary. Both Europe and the United States were satisfied by the invention of the internal combustion engine which would later help both sides at time of warfare. Also Ford Motors began to increase