The Jim Rutt Show
EP102 Debora Spar on Technological Impacts on Culture
This episode isn’t summarized yet
Create a free account and summarize it. In a few minutes you’ll have the key takeaways and a section-by-section summary.
Show notes
Debora Spar and Jim have a wide-ranging conversation on some of the insights in her book, Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny. They start by focusing on our transition from forager to agricultural life: the creation of property & new family structures, roles & lifestyles of women, polygyny, hoe vs plow cultures, and bastard children. They then go on to cover highlights of the industrial revolution: fossil fuels & steam power impacts, the idea of progress, factory life, women's changing cultural expectation, class dynamics, washing machines & other impactful household appliances, freeing dynamics of automobiles & female birth control. They finish this chat by talking about more recent technological inventions & their potential impacts: in-vitro fertilization & genetic technologies, surrogacy, online dating, and more.