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the evolution of an idea |
Ideas may FEEL like a lightning bolt when they hit, but ideas do not come from thin air. This an attempt to illustrate the intellectual genesis of ELEGANT TECHNOLOGY |
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Born: 1857 Wisconsin USA Author: "The Theory of the Leisure Class:" "The Instinct of Workmanship:" plus eight other books and over 100 major essays Because an elegant technological future is impossible without a progressive economic system to fund it, understanding and explaining Veblen, the MOST original and progressive American Political Economist, is the goal of much of this Web Site. Known Influences Gustav Schmöller Immanuel Kant and German Idealism American Midwestern Progressive Traditions 19th Century Nordic Progressiveism Charles Sanders Pierce and Pragmatism Industrialism and the Machine Age |
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John Kenneth Galbraith Born: 1908, Ontario CANADA Author: "The New Industrial State" among dozens of other nearly as superb books and essays. Galbraith is the most successful interpreters and promoters of Thorstein Veblen's ideas. He was the most influential of America's progressive economists and taught a generation of economists how to ensure a general prosperity. Wherever they were heard, they produced economic miracles from 1934-1973. |
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Tom Wolfe Born 1931, Virginia USA Author: The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby, Radical Chic, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, among others Like Veblen, a PhD from Yale who used the experience to inoculate himself from the absurdities and pretensions of America's ruling classes. The best of the "new journalists," Wolfe has provided the language with persistent expressions and enduring insights. Possibly no one has ever used the term "technological illiterates" with the power he employed in "The Right Stuff." Chapter Four of "Elegant Technology" could not have been written without his intellectual contribution. |
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Born 1949, Minnesota USA Author: ELEGANT TECHNOLOGY: Economic Prosperity from an Environmental Blueprint In addition to coining and popularizing the expression "Elegant Technology," Larson is also a patented inventor in the area of so-called "customized mass production"--an example of one of the bits necessary for an elegant technological future. He continues to write on themes related to the original idea. |
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And...every idea needs a bit of humor Scott Adams Born: 1957, New York USA Creator: Dilbert and Friends In the USA where social commentary has been utterly trivialized, Adams has exposed an important truth--that most "white-collar" workers are laboring under absurd and sometimes insane conditions. Better, he is FUNNY. And as anyone who studies Veblen and has read "The Dilbert Principle" will notice, their thinking is remarkably similar. This means either Adams is a student of Veblen or has figured out the same ideas independently. Either way, Adams is FAR more important than his status as a cartoonist would indicate. |
