Technology can always be seen as forming a dichotomy between good and evil, and these technologies sometimes improve our surroundings for the good and for the bad. The films “The Cathedral” and “New York” both describe the norms and values of society at very different time periods; the middle ages in Europe and the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 19th Century in the United States. With the help of the General and Persia systems as a guide, I will show the social structures of both societies, how technology interacts with the social structure and what the lasting results were of the technology of both time periods.