Marx at MIT, 1976-2015 In 1976, the life story of Leo Marx intersects with the institutional story of MIT. An extraordinary group of MIT citizens — Jerry Wiesner, Walter Rosenblith, Elting Morison among them — had decided that MIT needed to have the capacity in research and education to understand technology not just in instrumental ways, but in its most expansive, adventurous dimensions.
Leo Marx's work examines the relationship between technology and culture in 19th and 20th century America. He is the author of The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America(1964),The Pilot and the Passenger: Essays on Literature, Technology, and Culture in America (1988), and editor, with Merritt Roe Smith, of Does Technology Drive History.
Leo Marx (born November 15, 1919) is a Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for his works in the field of American studies.Dr Marx studies the relationship between technology and culture in 19th and 20th century America.
Leo Marx’s perspective on progress encompasses a more welcoming view on the topic of technological evolution than that of Jared Diamond’s. Marx states “The idea that technological improvements are a primary basis for--and an accurate gauge of--progress has long been a fundamental belief in the United States” (Marx, 1987).
Abstract “Technological pessimism” may be a novel term, but most of us seem to understand what it means. 2 It surely refers to that sense of disappointment, anxiety, even menace, that the idea of “technology” arouses in many people these days. As the editors of this volume note, however, there also is something paradoxical about the implication that technology is somehow responsible.
Leo Marx Leo Marx is Senior Lecturer and Kenan Professor of American Cultural History, Emeritus, at MIT. Merritt Roe Smith Merritt Roe Smith is Cutten Professor of the History of Technology at MIT and the author or editor of six books, most recently Inventing America: A History of the United States.