John Dean
The Culture-Technology Dynamic: Creator-Destroyer
Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 17 (2023), pp. 9-26

Abstract: The article is an analysis of technology as a trickster archetype. This is particularly about the cultural functioning and perception of technology in America, and about the relationship between technology and corporate business. The article draws from the tradition of Lewis Mumford’s cultural studies of technology, and includes a large variety of American examples of the archetype. Technology is identified as the Trickster archetype, that is as a character, not an attribute or prop. Thus, technology turns out to be an elusive, tricky character who eludes human
attempts to define it or exploit it.

Keywords: technology, archetype, trickster, corporation

DOI: 10.7311/PJAS.17/2023.02

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