"The difference between the age of individualism and that of concert was well characterized by the fact that, in the nineteenth century, when it rained, the people of Boston put up three hundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentieth century they put up one umbrella over all the heads.."
- Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward

We peer further into Edward Bellamy's fictional Boston of the year 2000, looking at this social machinery as a seed of the technological and social disciplines imposed in the twentieth century. In our studies, utopianism and dystopianism meet in the public sphere that re-submerges the individual under the power of state.

Reading: Bellamy chapter 14 through conclusion

Notes: National-Socialism in Looking Backward

Topic ideas

• Compare to Atlantic Monthly's "Grindwell Governing Machine" (1858)
  
  Note: this text is available through U. of Virginia Etext archive under anonymous author
  
  
• Samuel Butler's Erewhon (1872)
  
• William Morris' News From Nowhere (1890)
  
• William Dean Howells' Traveler from Altruria (1894)
  
• H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895)
  
• H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia (1905)
  
• Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (1921)
  
• Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932)
  
• Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936)
  
• Ayn Rand's Anthem (1937)
  
• the technocracy movement

Off-campus webpages

Donna M. Campbell, William Dean Howells

David Pearce, Aldous Huxley: Brave New World

Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand Institute

Note: These pages exist outside of San Jose State University servers and their content is not endorsed by the page maintainer or any other university entity. These pages have been selected because they may provide some guidance or insight into the issues discussed in class. Because one can never step into the same electronic river twice, the pages may or may not be available when you request them. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email Dr. Andrew Wood.