machine age

Andrew McAfee’s books, including “The Second Machine Age,” have focused on how technology is changing work.

The technology has captured the public imagination, but it has also tapped into some of our deepest fears about being human in a machine age.

Art Deco, with its striking geometry and gleaming surfaces, flourished in the 1920s and 1930s — the height of the Machine Age, as the show’s scenic designer, Scott Pask, points out — and was epitomized by the Chrysler Building in New York.

The color of the sets throughout is rooted in the metallic palette of the Machine Age: steel, silver, chrome, graphite.

To get the full meaning and impact of the Bechers’ Machine Age black-and-whites, they should really be viewed through the windows of their Information Age orange van.