Nicholas Carr's Blog: Management Theory, Debunked

• Nicholas Carr's Blog: Management Theory, Debunked

"An awestruck Henry Adams spent two weeks exploring the treasures of Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition, but he was most deeply affected by seeing a display of electric dynamos - two 800-kilowatt General Electric machines, the largest available at the time, and a dozen of the latest Westinghouse generators. He recalled the experience in his autobiography The Education of Henry Adams. 'One lingered long among the dynamos,' he wrote, 'for they were new, and they gave to history a new phase.' Sensing that such machines 'would result in infinite costless energy within a generation,' Adams knew that they would reshape the country and the world. He felt humbled by the dynamos, but their power also troubled him. What history's 'new phase' would bring, he realized, lay beyond our understanding and even our control: 'Chicago asked in 1893 for the first time the question whether the American people knew where they were driving.'"