This book documents and investigates the stories we have told and continue to tell about technology-now the dominant feature of our civilization-in fiction, non-fiction, film, and advertising. It answers important questions about the meanings people ascribe to technology, the hopes and fears we express in the different narratives, the effect of those narratives upon us, and the new forms of myth those narratives represent. Narratives of Technology offers an approach grounded in the humanities, adding another perspective to that of social scientists and technologists.

Preface.- 1 The Reality of Technology.- 2 Narrative and Myth.- 3 The Dominant Narrative.- 4 A Counter-Narrative.- 5 Literary Narratives.- 6 Faust and Technological Fulfillment.- 7 Frankenstein and Technological Failure.- 8 Movies, Machines, and Human Beings.- 9 Advertising Technology.- 10 The Transformation of Narrative

J. M. van der Laan is Professor of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University, USA. His various publications address a wide range of topics such as printing in the first hundred years after Gutenberg, eighteenth-century essays, nineteenth-century science fiction, and technology in contemporary culture and society.