If there is one thing I have learned from the first two quarters of the World Classics Program it is that a) our sense of decline precedes us, and b) that human societies can be seen to cycle through periods of prosperity and growth and periods of decline and stagnation. While this is a simple [...]
Domesticity and Progress: The Vacuum Cleaner Theory and other Thoughts
“More Work for Mother” by Ruth Schwartz Cowan is, essentially, a history of the technology of the home. The author’s hypothesis is that the home was only partially industrialized in the Twentieth Century, and that the failings of technology to truly revolutionize the home environment (or, more importantly, the work processes required to sustain it) [...]