Lindsey A. Freeman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469622378
- eISBN:
- 9781469623177
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469622378.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Science, Technology and Environment
Tucked into the folds of Appalachia and kept off all commercial maps, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was created for the Manhattan Project by the U.S. government in the 1940s. The city has experienced the ...
More
Tucked into the folds of Appalachia and kept off all commercial maps, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was created for the Manhattan Project by the U.S. government in the 1940s. The city has experienced the entire lifespan of the Atomic Age, from the fevered wartime enrichment of the uranium that fueled Little Boy, through a brief period of atomic utopianism after World War II when it began to brand itself as “The Atomic City,” to the anxieties of the Cold War, to the contradictory contemporary period of nuclear unease and atomic nostalgia. This book shows how a once-secret city is visibly caught in an uncertain present, no longer what it was historically yet still clinging to the hope of a nuclear future. It is a place where history, memory, and myth compete and conspire to tell the story of America’s atomic past and to explain the nuclear present.Less
Tucked into the folds of Appalachia and kept off all commercial maps, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was created for the Manhattan Project by the U.S. government in the 1940s. The city has experienced the entire lifespan of the Atomic Age, from the fevered wartime enrichment of the uranium that fueled Little Boy, through a brief period of atomic utopianism after World War II when it began to brand itself as “The Atomic City,” to the anxieties of the Cold War, to the contradictory contemporary period of nuclear unease and atomic nostalgia. This book shows how a once-secret city is visibly caught in an uncertain present, no longer what it was historically yet still clinging to the hope of a nuclear future. It is a place where history, memory, and myth compete and conspire to tell the story of America’s atomic past and to explain the nuclear present.
Robin Mansell and W. Edward Steinmueller
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198295570
- eISBN:
- 9780191685149
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198295570.003.0011
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Information Technology, Innovation
Like the expected energy abundance of the Atomic Age, the flow of information during the Information Age is also expected to become ‘too cheap to meter’, since communication capacity and information ...
More
Like the expected energy abundance of the Atomic Age, the flow of information during the Information Age is also expected to become ‘too cheap to meter’, since communication capacity and information exchange has increasingly become available and certain costs have been reduced. The fears associated with the Information Age are grounded on the disruptions and dislocations in the corresponding patterns of knowledge and work due to the introduction of new services and technologies. There is therefore a need to examine the consequences of exclusion, as well as the uncertainties related to the best means for taking advantage of these services and technologies to further human life quality and economic competitiveness. As we summarize the dominant themes in this book regarding the present era, we also have to know what to expect and how we should be taking on future applications.Less
Like the expected energy abundance of the Atomic Age, the flow of information during the Information Age is also expected to become ‘too cheap to meter’, since communication capacity and information exchange has increasingly become available and certain costs have been reduced. The fears associated with the Information Age are grounded on the disruptions and dislocations in the corresponding patterns of knowledge and work due to the introduction of new services and technologies. There is therefore a need to examine the consequences of exclusion, as well as the uncertainties related to the best means for taking advantage of these services and technologies to further human life quality and economic competitiveness. As we summarize the dominant themes in this book regarding the present era, we also have to know what to expect and how we should be taking on future applications.
Lindsey A. Freeman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469622378
- eISBN:
- 9781469623177
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469622378.003.0010
- Subject:
- Sociology, Science, Technology and Environment
This concluding chapter addresses the longing of residents of Oak Ridge for the days when the city was a muddy frontier at the beginning of the Atomic Age. Such a longing was shaped by positive ...
More
This concluding chapter addresses the longing of residents of Oak Ridge for the days when the city was a muddy frontier at the beginning of the Atomic Age. Such a longing was shaped by positive memories of working for a secret atomic bomb project, but it was also colored with nostalgia for an imagined golden age of mid-twentieth-century America. In addition, this sentiment not only describes an opinion about the past; it also betrays a vision of contemporary America as a nation divided and in decline; a nation that has lost, or is in the act of losing, its purpose and character.Less
This concluding chapter addresses the longing of residents of Oak Ridge for the days when the city was a muddy frontier at the beginning of the Atomic Age. Such a longing was shaped by positive memories of working for a secret atomic bomb project, but it was also colored with nostalgia for an imagined golden age of mid-twentieth-century America. In addition, this sentiment not only describes an opinion about the past; it also betrays a vision of contemporary America as a nation divided and in decline; a nation that has lost, or is in the act of losing, its purpose and character.
Nicole Seymour
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037627
- eISBN:
- 9780252094873
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037627.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter examines the alternate reality of the 2006 novel Half Life, wherein the United States has implemented a program of self-bombing to atone for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This bombing gives ...
More
This chapter examines the alternate reality of the 2006 novel Half Life, wherein the United States has implemented a program of self-bombing to atone for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This bombing gives rise to a politicized minority of conjoined twins—modeled satirically on, and overlapping with, queer communities—who then serve as emblems of peaceful, post-nuclear coexistence. In examining Half Life's revision of Atomic Age history, this chapter focuses on the queer ecological implications of its narrative form. This chapter studies the novel's so-called “ironic environmentalism”; in so doing, it builds on previous work in environmentalist rhetoric and establishes irony as a new topic of inquiry for queer ecology.Less
This chapter examines the alternate reality of the 2006 novel Half Life, wherein the United States has implemented a program of self-bombing to atone for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This bombing gives rise to a politicized minority of conjoined twins—modeled satirically on, and overlapping with, queer communities—who then serve as emblems of peaceful, post-nuclear coexistence. In examining Half Life's revision of Atomic Age history, this chapter focuses on the queer ecological implications of its narrative form. This chapter studies the novel's so-called “ironic environmentalism”; in so doing, it builds on previous work in environmentalist rhetoric and establishes irony as a new topic of inquiry for queer ecology.
Jason Dawsey
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781784994402
- eISBN:
- 9781526115126
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784994402.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Military History
Despite the lack of attention, he has received until recently in the Anglophone academic world, the German-Jewish technology critic and anti-nuclear militant Günther Anders (1902-1992) is a crucial ...
More
Despite the lack of attention, he has received until recently in the Anglophone academic world, the German-Jewish technology critic and anti-nuclear militant Günther Anders (1902-1992) is a crucial figure for the history of modern apocalypticism. Between 1955 and 1985, Anders tirelessly wrote, lectured and marched for the cause of nuclear abolition. Drawing on his magnum opus, The Obsolescence of Human Beings and related works,this essay focuses on Anders’ role as a theorist in the Ban-the-Bomb movement, specifically his remarkable efforts to define the Atomic Age as a distinct, final epoch of human history and to imagine a history-ending nuclear war between the superpowers. The piece concludes with some thoughts about where to locate Anders in the history of attempts to imagine the “imaginary war.”Less
Despite the lack of attention, he has received until recently in the Anglophone academic world, the German-Jewish technology critic and anti-nuclear militant Günther Anders (1902-1992) is a crucial figure for the history of modern apocalypticism. Between 1955 and 1985, Anders tirelessly wrote, lectured and marched for the cause of nuclear abolition. Drawing on his magnum opus, The Obsolescence of Human Beings and related works,this essay focuses on Anders’ role as a theorist in the Ban-the-Bomb movement, specifically his remarkable efforts to define the Atomic Age as a distinct, final epoch of human history and to imagine a history-ending nuclear war between the superpowers. The piece concludes with some thoughts about where to locate Anders in the history of attempts to imagine the “imaginary war.”
