The Business Art of Science
Megan Prelinger's Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age (W.W. Norton) is simultaneously a pop-science walk through the wondrous gadgets that human command of electrons produced in the 20th century; a history of the industries that brought them to us; and the story of how advertisers copping high-art techniques taught Americans how to understand and use cathode ray tubes, quartz crystals, transistors, circuit boards, computers, and bionic technologies to expand the human sensorium across the globe and then off it.
From the Renaissance on, artistic energy often drifts to where the money is. This book shows tech advertising is often as meaningful, beautiful, and even avant-garde as any fine art. And it shows art and technology moving in lockstep toward "dematerialization": As circuits shrink, conceptual and electronic art in turn moves beyond the grossly physical, signaling our power to do more and more with less and less.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Business Art of Science."
Hide Comments (0)
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post commentsMute this user?
Ban this user?
Un-ban this user?
Nuke this user?
Un-nuke this user?
Flag this comment?
Un-flag this comment?