Imaginary magnitude

“Perhaps the most important omission from ‘The Portable Sixties Reader,’ as from discussion of the `60s generally, is the impact on the culture of science and technology. True, no one ever mistook Neil Armstrong for Carlos Castaneda. But in ways profound as well as superficial, so much of the turmoil of the `60s had to do with science and technology: Jimi Hendrix’s feedback, Timothy Leary’s LSD, the Pill. Making ‘the white heat of technology’ his electoral mantra helped get Harold Wilson into 10 Downing Street. The Bond movies drew audiences as much with their fetishization of gadgetry as by 007’s derring-do. Tang earned General Foods millions by putting the Space Race on the breakfast table. People intuitively recognized science and technology as the great worldwide engine of change. What the Warren Court was to US jurisprudence, science (or at least its handiwork) was to global society.”

How very true. This is neither the first nor the last time Western Zeitgeist is characterised without S&T.

Read the rest of the review of The Portable Sixties Reader in the Boston Globe here.

[Link via Arts & Letters Daily.]