The impact of the railroad on American society: a communication perspective of technology

This manuscript examines the railroad system as a combination of humans and machines that form a symbiosis, and explains how the railroad exerted a huge effect on American life when it made irrelevant the organic – following nature – time system that existed in cities and countries where clocks were set according to weather conditions. The author makes the point that the railroad is an organ of society, that it will evolve to serve the functions we demand, that it has molded and altered – but never replaced – contact between humans, and that it will continue to enhance and facilitate it. This manuscript analyzes the social, cross-cultural, psychological, and financial impact of the railroad on American society in the past two hundred years. The measure of progress in the United States is tantamount to the mass of things that had to be sacrificed to it.