A fascinating collection of essays from such writers as Henry Ford, H. G. Wells, and Albert Einstein looks at the development of technology over the course the twentieth century, showing how it has led to both gains and losses for the planet, and charts the future evolution of our technological future. 25,000 first printing. "Technological wariness is an enduring disturbance, with roots in religion," writes popular-science interpreter Rhodes in his introduction to this welcome anthology of 20th-century scientific invention. "Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans carries the sense of it; so does the serpent persuading Eve to taste the knowledgeable apple, and the Jewish myth of the Golem, a Frankenstein's monster animated by incorporations of holy words." Gods and monsters abound in these pages, made up of excerpts from essays, reports, articles, and speeches by both inventors and their critics. Rhodes includes, for instance, a worried editorial from 1931 by the journalist Floyd Allport, who presciently noted the community-destroying effects of technological advances such as the private car and the telephone; he also reproduces any number of warnings from the likes of Aldous Huxley, Vannevar Bush, and Edward Abbey that humankind's scientific imagination far outstrips our moral capacity. Joining these jeremiads in Rhodes's pages are more optimistic assessments, including Intel Corporation founder Gordon Moore's famous formulation, from 1965, that "the complexity of integrated circuits has approximately doubled every year since their introduction," whereas "cost per function has decreased several thousand-fold"--which explains why personal computers, among other items, have become increasingly more powerful and yet less expensive. Anyone interested in the development of 20th-century science, applied or theoretical, will delight in Rhodes's collection. --Gregory McNamee "The Western world has argued passionately about technology--what it is, where it's going, whether it's good or bad for us--throughout the twentieth century, even while inventing it at a ferocious and accelerating rate," Rhodes writes. "This anthology samples that vital debate." Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, excerpts the writings of many people who either helped to develop technology or pondered its impact; his selections make rewarding reading. He begins with journalist Mark Sullivan, pointing out in the 1920s that the words "radio," "movie" and "aviator" were unknown in 1900, and he carries on with 213 more contributions from both well-known and obscure observers of the technological scene. The book is part of the Sloan Technology Series of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. An anthology of short takes on the century's progress in invention/technology, selected and presented chronologically by a prize-winning writer who himself has contributed to the history of technology (e.g., Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, 1995). The result is a mixed bag, leaving the reader frustrated (why this and not that) and querulous (where are we headed? what is the point?). Some selections celebrate moments of discovery; others discourse on the meaning and implications of an innovation, making value judgments. But, as he says at the outset, ``The deep truth about the debate that fills this book is that it's a debate among the orthodox. . . . No one, not even the Unabomber, has proposed a return to a Hobbesian garden of the primates.'' So science and technology (the distinction blurs) emerge as the inevitable fallout of our enlarged brains. As for the limits, turn of the century writers like Henry Adams voiced fear of the dynamo, Samuel Gompers worried that the new industrial efficiencies were ``producing wealth but grinding man''themes that recur as the century develops. In due course, Rhodes gives us Oppenheimer confessing that scientists ``have known sin,'' and Newton Minow lamenting TV's ``vast wasteland.'' There are also the daring visions and realities of the Pill, the transistor, the laser, and the artificial intelligence pursuits of Herbert Simon and Marvin Minsky. In short, the 20th century is a technological dreamor nightmare, depending on your point of view. A serious omission is medical advances (because Rhodes says they are so well attended). Beginning with the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, molecular biology and its applications have become the technological movers and shakers in the late 20th centuryand of the century to come. In the end, Rhodes has given us a collection of trees (with some species missing). Pity, because with a little more effort and more than cursory commentary he could have created pathways leading to a forest of ideas. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. ...you'll find charms as well as chills in this collection of a couple of hundred items culled from speeches, technical journals, novels, reports and even a C & W s