Thoreau's Idea of Progress in Technology Batrishia Rakhim College

If Thoreau were to retreat to Walden Pond today, would he bring along the internet? This question, suggested by a recent Christian Science Monitor headline, gets to the heart of important aspect of Thoreau's project. Readers of Walden would be more inclined to suggest that he wouldn’t, simply because his whole book preaches simplicity and the significance of solitude and detachment from society – which is the exact opposite of what the internet, especially in the age of smartphones, encourages. This essay aims to explore Thoreau's opinionative views on progress in technology and will also attempt to juxtapose the relevance of his statements and arguments with that of our contemporary era.

In the first chapter entitled, Economy, Thoreau confidently discredits the railroad and the magnetic telegraph – two highly celebrated technological achievements of the time, by referring to these as “modern improvements” with “an illusion about them.” He declares that “they are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important...