No mere technicalities: How things work and why it matters

Technology and Culture

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 607-620

  Post, Robert C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0033416231     PISSN: 0040165X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (45)

1. Joyce Appleby, "Echoes and Reverberations for a Retiring President," Perspectives, December 1997, 2. Appleby was the second UCLA historian "to receive the highest honor of the historical profession" ("Joyce Appleby Elected President of the A.H.A.," UCLA Historian 5 [spring 1996]: 1); it is worth emphasizing that the first, Lynn White jr., had previously been president of SHOT.
2. George H. Daniels, "The Big Questions in the History of American Technology," Technology and Culture 11 (1970): 2. Daniels went on to say that the important question is why they are done or made in some particular way. Pursell posted his remarks about why we seem to be "talking to ourselves in a corner" on Nina Lerman's WITH listserv on the Internet in March 1998.
3. Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, Calif., 1997), 15. Bray's introduction, "The Framework of Everyday Life: Technology, Women and Cultural History," is a remarkable essay.
4. Robert Friedel to the author, 27 August 1998. I appreciate Robert's critique of an earlier version of my remarks.
5. Robert Multhauf to Melvin Kranzberg, 12 January 1973, Multhauf Papers, Box 5, RU 7467, Smithsonian Institution Archives. Multhauf continued, "You clearly have a preference for articles dealing with impacts, relationships, etc. . . . over subject-matter articles. Many of the former, however, are clearly right off the top of somebody's head, and correspondingly ephemeral."
6. Alex Roland, "What Hath Kranzberg Wrought? Or Does the History of Technology Matter?" Technology and Culture 38 (1997): 5.
7. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, "The Consumption Junction: A Proposal for Research Strategies in the Sociology of Technology," in The Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 363.
8. John Law, "The Olympus 320 Engine: A Case Study in Design, Development, and Organizational Control," Technology and Culture 33 (1992): 409-40; Jameson W. Doig and David Billington, "Ammann's First Bridge: A Study in Engineering, Politics, and Entrepreneurial Behavior," Technology and Culture 35 (1994): 537-70; Gabrielle Hecht, "Political Designs: Nuclear Reactors and National Policy in Postwar France," Technology and Culture 35 (1994): 657-85; Eric Schatzberg, "Ideology and Technical Choice: The Decline of the Wooden Airplane in the United States, 1920-1945," Technology and Cultured (1994): 34-69.
9. John Law, "The Olympus 320 Engine: A Case Study in Design, Development, and Organizational Control," Technology and Culture 33 (1992): 409-40; Jameson W. Doig and David Billington, "Ammann's First Bridge: A Study in Engineering, Politics, and Entrepreneurial Behavior," Technology and Culture 35 (1994): 537-70; Gabrielle Hecht, "Political Designs: Nuclear Reactors and National Policy in Postwar France," Technology and Culture 35 (1994): 657-85; Eric Schatzberg, "Ideology and Technical Choice: The Decline of the Wooden Airplane in the United States, 1920-1945," Technology and Cultured (1994): 34-69.
10. John Law, "The Olympus 320 Engine: A Case Study in Design, Development, and Organizational Control," Technology and Culture 33 (1992): 409-40; Jameson W. Doig and David Billington, "Ammann's First Bridge: A Study in Engineering, Politics, and Entrepreneurial Behavior," Technology and Culture 35 (1994): 537-70; Gabrielle Hecht, "Political Designs: Nuclear Reactors and National Policy in Postwar France," Technology and Culture 35 (1994): 657-85; Eric Schatzberg, "Ideology and Technical Choice: The Decline of the Wooden Airplane in the United States, 1920-1945," Technology and Cultured (1994): 34-69.
11. John Law, "The Olympus 320 Engine: A Case Study in Design, Development, and Organizational Control," Technology and Culture 33 (1992): 409-40; Jameson W. Doig and David Billington, "Ammann's First Bridge: A Study in Engineering, Politics, and Entrepreneurial Behavior," Technology and Culture 35 (1994): 537-70; Gabrielle Hecht, "Political Designs: Nuclear Reactors and National Policy in Postwar France," Technology and Culture 35 (1994): 657-85; Eric Schatzberg, "Ideology and Technical Choice: The Decline of the Wooden Airplane in the United States, 1920-1945," Technology and Cultured (1994): 34-69.
12. Alan E. Shapiro, "Historians of Science Must Again Master Scientific Substance," Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 February 1998, B4.
13. Donald MacKenzie, "How Do We Know the Properties of Artefacts? Applying the Sociology of Knowledge to Technology," in Technological Change: Methods and Themes in the History of Technology, ed. Robert Fox (Amsterdam, 1996), 247.
14. John G. Burke, "Bursting Boilers and the Federal Power," Technology and Culture 7 (1966): 1-23; "Organizational Notes," Technology and Culture 8 ( 1967): 350.
15. John G. Burke, "Bursting Boilers and the Federal Power," Technology and Culture 7 (1966): 1-23; "Organizational Notes," Technology and Culture 8 ( 1967): 350.
16. Robert C. Post, "The Page Locomotive: Federal Sponsorship of Invention in Mid-19th-Century America," Technology and Culture 13 (1972): 140-69.
17. This apt phrase was used by John M. Staudenmaier in a letter to the SHOT Newsletter, July 1998, 3.
18. Arthur Molella, "Mumford in Historiographical Context," in Lewis Mumford: Public Intellectual, ed. Thomas Hughes and Agatha C. Hughes (New York, 1990), 28.
19. Robert L. Frost, review of Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, by Neil Postman, Technology and Culture 34 (1993): 715.
20. George Basalla, The Evolution of Technology (New York, 1988), 14 (italics added).
21. Arnold Pacey, The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the Development of Technology (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), vii.
22. Thomas Hughes, Rescuing Prometheus (New York, 1998).
23. Daniel S. Greenberg, "Boondoggle in Space," Baltimore Sun, 4 August 1992; Greenberg, "Weightlessness of U.S. Space Policy," Baltimore Sun, 1 October 1997.
24. Daniel S. Greenberg, "Boondoggle in Space," Baltimore Sun, 4 August 1992; Greenberg, "Weightlessness of U.S. Space Policy," Baltimore Sun, 1 October 1997.
25. William Drozdiak, "German 'Maglev' Train Attracts Controversy," Washington Post, 20 April 1998.
26. Ted Gup, "The End of Serendipity," Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 November 1997, A52. A senior programmer for Baxter Healthcare writes that "research and discovery, experimentation and experience, creativity, imagination, hard work - that's education, not point-and-click, chat groups, Websites or search engines" (Daniel Nahmod, "Foolish Spending on School Computers," Baltimore Sun, 4 August 1997).
27. Ted Gup, "The End of Serendipity," Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 November 1997, A52. A senior programmer for Baxter Healthcare writes that "research and discovery, experimentation and experience, creativity, imagination, hard work - that's education, not point-and-click, chat groups, Websites or search engines" (Daniel Nahmod, "Foolish Spending on School Computers," Baltimore Sun, 4 August 1997).
28. Eugene S. Ferguson, "Toward a Discipline of the History of Technology," Technology and Culture 15 (1974): 21. I am quite attached to a postcard I received from Ferguson in 1986, after I had sent him some of my early articles on drag racing as a case study in technological enthusiasm, in which he wrote, "you are into a vein of analysis that is not close to exhaustion."
29. Pacey (n. 17 above), 4.
30. Brooke Hindle, "The Exhilaration of Early American Technology," in Early American Technology: Making and Doing Things From the Colonial Era to 1850, ed. Judith A. McGaw (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), 66 (reprinted from Hindle, Technology in Early America: Needs and Opportunities for Study [Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966]). I discuss Hindle's signal contributions to the concept of technological enthusiasm in this same volume; "Technology in Early America: A View From the 1990s," 16-39.
31. Brooke Hindle, "The Exhilaration of Early American Technology," in Early American Technology: Making and Doing Things From the Colonial Era to 1850, ed. Judith A. McGaw (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), 66 (reprinted from Hindle, Technology in Early America: Needs and Opportunities for Study [Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966]). I discuss Hindle's signal contributions to the concept of technological enthusiasm in this same volume; "Technology in Early America: A View From the 1990s," 16-39.
32. Joseph Rossman, Industrial Creativity: The Psychology of the Inventor (New Hyde Park, N.Y., 1964), 152.
33. Bruce Seely, "Back to the Future? High-Speed Rail and Historical Patterns of American Transportation Development," Railroad History 170 (spring 1994): 12.
34. For an elaboration of this case study, see Robert C. Post, "The Myth Behind the Streetcar Revival," American Heritage, May/June 1998, 95-100; for bibliography, see the notes to Post, "Images of the Pacific Electric: Why Memories Matter," Railroad History 178 (autumn 1998): 30-68.
35. For an elaboration of this case study, see Robert C. Post, "The Myth Behind the Streetcar Revival," American Heritage, May/June 1998, 95-100; for bibliography, see the notes to Post, "Images of the Pacific Electric: Why Memories Matter," Railroad History 178 (autumn 1998): 30-68.
36. Donald Davis, "North American Urban Mass Transit, 1890-1950: What if We Thought of It as a Type of Technology?" History and Technology 12 (1995): 309-26.
37. This decisive point is developed in Donald Davis and Barbara Lorenzkowski, "A Platform for Gender Tensions: Working Women and Riding on Canadian Urban Public Transit in the 1940s," Canadian Historical Review 79 (September 1998): 431-65. My thanks to the authors for a copy of the typescript.
38. Cowan (n. 7 above), 273.
39. Eric Mann, "Bradleyism as Corporatism," Los Angeles Times, 4 October 1998. Davis and Lorenzkowski draw no distinctions based on race or class, but of course riding transit is optional for some women and not for others. In a promising work in progress, Matthew Roth notes that race "can intrude to good effect on the arid policy-based analysis that has dominated transportation historiography" ("'We Got Things They Think We Ain' Got No Business With': Race and Movement in American Urban Historiography," 22; my thanks to Matt for a copy of the typescript).
40. In this same vein, see also Mike Davis, "L.A.'s Transit Apartheid: Runaway Train Crushes Buses," The Nation, 18 September 1995, 270-74.
41. Stuart W. Leslie, "Commentary: The 'Lost Exhilaration' of American Technology," in The History of American Technology: Exhilaration or Discontent? ed. David A. Hounshell (Wilmington, Del., 1984), 33.
42. Deborah Shapley, "History of American Technology - A Fresh Bicentennial Look," Science, 21 November 1975, 763.
43. Melvin Kranzberg, "Technology and History: 'Kranzberg's Laws,'" Technology and Culture 27 (1986): 557.
44. I add this qualification because there has been a certain amount of progress in the past couple of decades, as one can see by comparing Michael Kammen's The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States (Ithaca, N.Y., 1980) - a substantial volume that is practically devoid of technology - with his "An Americanist's Reprise: The Pervasive Role of Histoire Probleme in Historical Scholarship concerning the United States since the 1960s," Reviews in American History 26 (1998), especially his laudatory paragraph about Ruth Cowan's More Work For Mother.
45. I have become rather fond of quoting this remark of John Staudenmaier's, from an interview titled "The Frailties and Beauties of Technological Creativity," published in Invention and Technology, spring 1993, 16-24.