Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant: A Technological Utopia in Retrospect

The Maine Yankee nuclear power plant, built in 1968 and closed in 1996, provides a revealing case study of the rise and fall of the nuclear power industry in the United States. At its inception, the plant generated a great outpouring of optimistic superlatives promising electricity “too cheap to meter” and a solution to Maine’s longstanding energy problems. Its promoters envisioned a technological utopia for Maine communities based on cheap and efficient energy, and based on these promising prospects, the town of Wiscasset welcomed the plant. This article traces the changes in public thinking that led to statewide referenda on the question of nuclear power in 1980, 1982, and 1987, and it highlights the anti-utopian fears that fueled these campaigns. Howard Segal is a professor of history specializing in history of technology at the University of Maine, having joined the faculty there in 1986. His publications include Technological Utopianism in American Culture (1985); Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings of Technology in America (1994); Technology in America: A Brief History (1989); and Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford’s Village Industries (2001).His current research involves a history of high-tech technological utopias in America

Communications

(c) Massachusetts Institute of Technology Pres

Professor Segal (Howard P.) Papers, 1974-2019

Howard Paul Segal was born on July 15, 1948, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. from Franklin & Marshall College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Princeton University. Segal first came to the University of Maine in 1986 as an assistant professor of history and also the associate director of the Technology and Society Project in the College of Engineering. In 2020, Segal was awarded emeritus status by the University of Maine. Segal was a prolific author, among the books he authored were Technology in America: A Brief History , Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford\u27s Village Industries and Technology and Utopia . Segal was also active in Phi Beta Kappa and helped organize the visiting scholar program for the University of Maine\u27s Delta Chapter. Segal taught at the University of Maine until his death in 2020. The records contain textual information created and curated by Howard P. Segal who was a nationally-known scholar on the history of technology. The records cover part of his time as a faculty member at the University of Maine and author. The series Teaching, Publications & Research Records contains draft manuscripts of publications authored by Segal, clippings of reviews of Segal\u27s works and written by Segal of other\u27s works, clippings of various articles written by Segal, syllabi for courses Segal taught at the University of Maine, and information regarding research grants for which Segal applied. The record group also includes material related to Segal\u27s support of LGBTQ youth.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/findingaids/1518/thumbnail.jp

'I am Trying to Believe': Dystopia as Utopia in the Year Zero Alternate Reality Game

A major symptom of postmodernity is the loss of utopian energy, of which the popularity of dystopian cultural production is evident.  The dystopian genre, however, is cautionary, and thus utopian.  Associated is the influence of technology on post-utopian culture—although it has been viewed pessimistically, technology allows for new ways of telling dystopian stories.  One such mode of telling dystopian stories is the Alternate Reality Game (ARG), a narrative, multi-media game, using several different technologies that puts the player in a fictional reality.  One ARG that exemplifies the idea of dystopia as having utopian energy is Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero, which shows that technology can have utopian energy, offering new ways of telling dystopian stories such as via the ARG, thus locating some utopian energy in postmodern culture through the form’s culturally critical structure and interactive nature, which equals a call to action against the dystopian nature of contemporary society

Livres reçus — Books Received

Voici la liste des livres reçus au bureau de la revue depuis novembre 1987. This list includes all books received by the journal since November 1987

The texture of Utopia

To a large extent the history of Utopia has been intimately bound up with the city. Representations of Utopian futures have often been rendered as visions of ideal urban living. Moreover, a technologically driven cornucopia of material abundance has become a recurrent feature such that it is almost shorthand itself for Utopia. This paper will engage with the material culture of such Utopian representations - the buildings, the practical hardware of everyday life, the status of manual and mental labour, etc. It is the contention of this paper that most of these Utopian futures can be interpreted as representing the triumph of alienation and, hence, as anti-Utopian. The human body is ‘disappropriated’, abandoned to the sensory un-engaging qualities of Utopian material culture. An alternative approach to conceptualising the material stuff of Utopia will be advanced, one in which the full re-appropriation of the body is given a more central role

Nineteenth-Century Industrializing Maine: The Way Life Really Was: Paul Rivard’s Made in Maine

“Made in Maine” is about nineteenth-century manufacturing in a state usually associated with forests, potatoes, seacoasts, and tourists. The exhibit provocatively challenges the conventional wisdom about what Maine was like in the years slightly before and mostly after statehood in 1820