Howard P. Segal

Professor of history and director of the Technology and Society Project, University of Maine.

Howard P. Segal is a professor of history and director of the Technology and Society Project at the University of Maine. He specializes in the history of technology and the history of science, with a particular focus on American technology and American utopianism. His publications include Technological Utopianism in American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 1985) and Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford's Village Industries (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005). His work situates technological visionaries within the broader tradition of American utopian thought.

Relationship to Fuller

Relationship: chronicler. Segal contributed the essay "R. Buckminster Fuller: America's Last Genuine Utopian?" to New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller. Drawing on his expertise in the history of American utopianism, Segal posits that R. Buckminster Fuller may have been America's last genuine utopian — a man motivated by a vision of how technology could help humankind realize a more perfect world. The essay examines how Fuller tried to bridge the gap between dream and reality by laying substantive plans for the Dymaxion houses and cars that would facilitate and complete that utopia. Segal's framing places Fuller within a long lineage of American technological utopians rather than treating him as a sui generis figure.

See Also

• New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller — the collection he contributed to

Sources

• New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller (source reference) — Zotero record for the anthology