The history of the future is the history of a society's imagination, and Imagining Tomorrow takes a lively and informative look at the future as envisioned in the American past. These ten original essays explore the impulse to peer into the future, particularly into the American dream of a technological utopia. Some of the technologies discussed are x-rays, radio, plastics, the electric light, and nuclear power (including Henry Ford's nuclear car).
Joseph J. Corn is a lecturer in the Program on Values, Technology, Science, and Society at Stanford University.
"Imagining Tomorrow makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of how deepseated American faith in technology has helped shape our past and alerts us to the dangers of continuing this blind embrace in the future."
- Peter J. Kuznick, Science
"The value of sheer good fun in scholarship ought never to be discounted: Imagining Tomorrow is chockful of ladies in electrified tea-gowns and time capsules crammed with amazing trivia.... The facts astound and amuse and delight. They also suggest that even post-nuclear skeptics can learn to love technology again,"
- Karal Ann Marling, University of Minnesota