This textbook in its second edition is written by Gary Cross and Rick Szostak and does a wonderful job of summarizing American attitudes towards some aspects of information technology. Using these attitudes in your thesis would be a good idea to hammer home the point that Batman is representative of popular culture and thus the United States of America.
"The Technocracy Movement" Pg. 245
"At the outset of the twentieth century, technology was generally hailed as unambiguously good. The war tarnished this view considerably (much less in the United State than in Europe), but it was the widespread unemployment of the interwar period that caused many to question the benevolence of technological advances. Observers coined the term "technological unemployment" in the 1920s to describe workers who lost their jobs to machines. They recognized that the phenomenon was not new, but concern about the effect of machines on jobs naturally rose during the Depression.
One result of the Great Depression was the rise of the technocracy movement. In contrast to those who advocated a slower pace of innovation, the technocrats, along with the bulk of the American populace, continued to believe in the benevolent effects of technological change. They believed that institutions should be changed to reflect technological trends, rather than the reverse."
Automobile Culture and the Revolution of American Time and Space Pg. 275
"The automobile has had a complex impact on Americans: it offered them privacy in travel, but the car also became a way to display one's wealth, taste, and personality (very much as did clothes in a pedestrian age). It offered residential choice, even as it forced Americans into hours of traffic to get there. The car symbolized the American solution to industrialism: accepting a a sometimes dehumanizing job in exchange for the income and time to participate as an individual in the car culture. The automobile has produced a dependence on the gasoline engine, and encouraged the creation of a society that perhaps more than any other is built around mobility and privacy. The results do not please all, especially those longing for a society more sensitive to urban and societal values. But most Americans remain happy with (if perhaps addicted to) their cars."
American Radio Culture: A Commercialized Entertainment Technology Pg. 282
"The radio was surely more important to Americans in the 1930s and 1940s than were the movies. Unlike the motion picture, listeners did not have to leave the house, go to a potentially dangerous part of town, sit next to strangers, or buy a ticket. Instead, radio listeners could remain safe with their families, turn the radio on or off, and change the volume or station at will. They could even listen while working or in bed. The radio was (and remains) well adapted to household activities. Radio relieved the isolation of women in homes during a period when the number of relatives and children in the house all day was declining. Most of all, the radio wonderfully reconciled two things most Americans wanted: privacy, and a community of shared information and entertainment."
TV and the Origins of Prime-Time Families Pg. 283
"The BBC began the first television service in 1936, but NBC followed soon after at the New York's World Fair in 1939. Commercial broadcasting from New York began in 1941, even though World War II delayed mass purchase of the "box" until 1945. TV came soon to dominate popular culture, just as radio had before World War II. In 1950, only 9 percent of American homes had TV; four years later, the figure was 55 percent (a percentage that took 37 years for radio to reach). In 1967, 95 percent of American homes consumed an average of five hours of television per day."
Pg. 285
"The video cassette recorder (VCR) first appear in 1975 with Sony's Betamax. In the 1980s, the VHS format prevailed over Beta for home recording. By 1990s, rentals and sales of movie cassettes accounted for more than twice the box office gross at movie theaters. The VCR, and after 1995, the digital videodisc (DVD) also transformed TV by further undercutting network broadcasting: they offered viewers greater choice in rented recordings, in "time shifting" programs, and "fast forwarding" through commercials."
The Technology of the Balance of Terror Pg. 285 - 286
"Although developed first in the 1950s, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become important since the 1980s in the American arsenal. They have been used extensively for military reconnaissance. They range in wingspan from the 6-inch Black Widow to the 116-foot Global Hawk. While most are used for intelligence, some of the larger UAVs have been equipped with missiles. Nonlethal weapons of many kinds have been developed also, including lasers to temporarily blind enemy combatants, and filaments used to short-out electricity.
Along with the now ubiquitous use of computers to coordinate supply and combat, these military innovations seemed to be leading a "revolution in military affairs." Precision and often remote strikes at any identified target appeared to negate many of the rules of war. Thus, some observers believed that military conflicts could become predictable and nearly cost-free in loss of life. Improvements in aircraft carriers and accurate long-distance bombing made it possible for Americans to quickly deploy overwhelming power in the Balkans in 1999, and against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 without significant U.S. casualties. However, as in the past, the technological advantages of one side (in this case, the American) can quickly turn to the benefit of an enemy when new precision and flexible weapons become available on a global scale. And, the advantages of a high-tech military can be neutralized by "asymmetrical warfare," whereby a poorer adversary can avoid direct conflict, on the terms of the superior power, by using terror, suicide attacks on "soft" targets, sabotage, or other means to attach or defend against the United States and its allies. As in the past, technological "fixes" in war making continue to have unintended consequences."
Computers and a New Debate About Technology Pg. 336 - 340
Photocopied the pages of great societal analysis of information technology
Modern Americans in a Technological World Pg. 342
"In the years between 1945 and the present, technology has frequently been understood as both a panacea and an enemy. Technology continued to inspire those fascinated with science's ingenuity in mastering nature, reducing routine and arduous labor, and diversifying life through mass consumption. To others, the increased pace of technological change only seemed to propel humanity into a world in which gadgetry replaced social life, and new problems of pollution and affluence replaced the old concerns of toil, insecurity, and scarcity. While some technological "pessimists" seemed to look back nostalgically on a "lost" past and fearfully toward the future, others advocated a technology that was "appropriate" to the dignity of work, a clean environment, and a less materialist culture."
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