social shaping of technology - introductory essay

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Introductory Essay

We live our lives in a world of things that people have made. Mostly wetake that .world for g r a n t ~ d .We do not ask why our refrigerator makesan annoying humming nmse, nor why our domestic appliances are shapedt h ~way they are. We think about electricity only when the bill has to bepaid, or when the supply fails. An electric light bulb is an object that excitesn ~comment. When technology does get into the news- as has happenedWith n u c l ~ a rweapons and nuclear power, with the microchip, with testtube b a b i ~ swe often feel powerless to affect the course of events.Technological change seems to have its own logic, which we may perhaps

protest about or even try to block, but which we appear to be unable toalter fundamentally.

When we tu.rn to what social scientists have written about technology,we find a <;lominant approach that does little to shake this way of looking

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at things. tsocial scientists have tended to concentrate on the 'diects' oftechnology, _on the ' i ~ t ' .of technological change on society. This is aperfe:tly vahd concern, but It leaves a prior, and perhaps more important,questwn unasked and therefore unanswered. What has shaped thetechnology that is having 'effe.cts ~ What has caused and is causing thetechnological. h a ~ g e swhos.e Impact we are experiencing?

Our focus In this ~ e a d e rIs o ~answers to this often unasked question.In particular, we are Interested In h e , . , £ i l C i a l J ~ ~ ~ st ~ a t _ s _ l _ a p e _ ~ c h n o l o g i c a lc l 1 ~ : g - 9 ~ ·To what extent, and how, does the kind of society we live in affectthe kin? of e c h n o l ~ g ywe p ~ o d u c e ?What role does society play in howthe refngerator got Its hum, In why the light bulb is the way it is in whynuclear missiles are designed the way they are? '

Our p ~ r p o s eis twofold. First, we wish to provide readers, both insidean? o u t s i d ~academic settings, with a collection of lively and informativearticles which argue that technology is shaped by society. Second, we wantto persuade. ~ o s eof our e l l o ~social scientists who ar e not already convincedto study this Issue more senously and systematically. We wish no one toabandon r e s ~ a r c hon the effects of technology on society, but we want atleast equal ~ I m efor t h ~study. of the effects of society on technology.

Such a shift of focus S not without consequence. If our thinking centreson the effect of technology on society, then we will tend to pose questions

Introductory essay

like, How can society best adapt to changing technology? W e will taketechnological change as a given, as an independent factor,. and think throughour social actions as a range of (more or less) passive r ~ _ s p o n s e s .If,alternatively, we focus on the effect of society on technology, then e c ~ n o l o g y

ceases to be an independent factor. Our technology becomes, hke oureconomy or our political system, an aspect of the. way we live ~ o c i a l l y .Itbecomes something whose changes are part of wider c h n g ~ sIn th : way

we live. It even becomes something whose changes we might think ofconsciously shaping- though we must warn right at the ?eginning that tosay that technology is socially shaped is not to say that It can necessanlybe altered easily. To draw an analogy, political systems clearly are shapedby the wider societies they are part of, but chan?in? ~ h e mis no simplebusiness, no straightforward consequence of an Individual or collectivedecision to try to change them. .

Technology and society are both complex t e r m ~ .As t ~ I s bookproceeds, we will start to unravel a few of the sets of social ~ e l t w n sandsocial institutions that together make up society . Here, we will make onlyone point: that to talk about the social shaping of technology is not to implythat the only factors at work are those that p e r v ~ ea whole ~ o c i e t y .~ s

we shall see, especially in Par t Four, very particular localised socialorganisations and social interests have a vital role to pl.ay to?

About ~ g y we can say a little more . ~ ~ ~ ~ r i l lIs a shpp:ry ?ne;Its boundaries with science are unclear, as Indeed are those With artor the economy . Furthermore, how we see these boundaries changes fromone historical period to another. And, perhaps most i ~ p o r t a n t l y ,the o ~ d

'technology' has at least three different layers q fmeanmg. At the most basiclevel, 'tech lcililgy' refers-to sets of physical objects- to c a r ~ ,o: lathes,. orvacuum-cleaners, or computers. Here, the qu,estion of the SOCial shapingof technology has a clear enough meaning: we ar : talking about .theinfluence of social factors on the design and configuratiOn of these physicalobjects. But few authors are content with such a narrow ' h a r d ~ ~ - " r ~ '

definition of technology. An object such as a car or a vacuum c l ~ a n e rS

only a__technology, rather than an arbitrary lump of matter, because It formspart of a set of human activities. A c?mputer. without p r o g r ~ sandprogrammers is simply a useless collectiOn ?f ~ I t sof metal, p l s h ~andsilicon. So ' t ~ c h n o l o g y 'rer,ers to human actiVIties, as well asJ_Q_()bJects.Steelmaking say is a technology: but this implies that the technology

' ' 1 hincludes what steelworkers do as well as the furnaces they use. And w enwe start to talk about what people working do, it could well be said thatwe are already talking about society, not about something separate thatis influenced by society.

Thirdly, technology refers to wl? _at p J ~ - ~ - q ~ - - a ~ - ~ e l ~ _ sw h a t ~ h e y . d o

Technology is knowledge, as Layton (1974) empliasises. Te-chn.ologicalthings are meaningless without the know-how to use them, repair them,

design them and make them. That know-how often cannot be captured

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in words. It is visual, even tactile, rather than simply verbal or mathematical(Ferguson 1977). But it can also be systematised and taught, as in the variousdisciplines of engineering. This indeed is the older meaning of technology'one predating the use of the term to mean hardware - technology a ~

systematic knowledge of the practical arts. 2. T h ~ s edifferent layers of meaning of technology are worth bearing in

mind In what follows. But our purpose is not to attempt to refine a definition.

The resto ~

this essay is organised as follows. First, we discuss at greaterlength ~ e Idea that. technology has effects on society, particularly a versionof that Idea (a mistaken one, to our minds) known as 'technologicaldeterminism . Then we begin more systematically to ask the question,What shapes technology? We discuss arguments that science shapes

te.chnology, then arguments that preceding technology shapes technology.Finally, and at greatest length, we introduce various pathways throughwhich society shapes technology.

Technological determinism

The single most influential theory of the relationship between technology~ n . dsociety i ~ 'technological determinism' . This is the theory that technologyS Indeed an Independen t factor, and that changes in technology cause social

~ h a n g e s .In ~ s strongest version, the theory claims that change in technologyIs the most Important cause of change in society.

According to technological determinism, technology impinges on societyfrom outside of society. There is a parallel with nineteenth-century theoriesof climatic determinism , where it was said that the climate (an independentfactor, over which societies had no influence) shaped the nature of society.Sometimes technological change may be seen as outside of society, in thesame w ~as the weather is, as when a backward society is affected bythe supenor technology of a more advanced one with which it has comeinto contact. At other times, technology may be seen as outside society

?nlym e . t a p ~ o r i c a l l y .

The technologists who produce new technology areIn this view Indeed members of society, but their activity is in an importantsense independentof their membership of society. In the most common versionof. technological d ~ t e r m i n i s mthese technologists are seen as applyingscience', as working out the practical implications of new scientificdiscoveries, and those scientific discoveries are seen simply as new, moreaccurate insights into natural reality. Scientists discover, technologists followthe logic of those discoveries in turning them into new techniques and newdevices, and these techniques and devices are then introduced into societyand have (often unpredicted) effects - that is the most widespread accountof how technology comes to be an independent factor.. .so the first part of technological determinism is that technical changeIs In some sense autonomous, outside ofsociety, literally or metaphorically.

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The second part is that technical c h a n g ~c uses ~ o c i a lchange. Sometimesthe social changes referred to can be quite particular. Thus Ogburn a ~ dNimkoff(1964, 571-5) quote a list of no fewer than 1 50 sug?ested soci.aleffects of the radio in the United States, such as r e g w n ~d i f f e r ~ n c e sInculture become less pronounced . The more dramatic v ~ r s w n softechnological determinism, however, are those that see the entire form ofa society as being conditioned by technology. . .

Some more futuristic commentators, such as Large (1980), claim thisof the microchip. The microelectronic revolution, they claim, is c ~ u s i n ganew form of society to emerge. We will be forced to change our Ideas ofwork and leisure, it is said, as the chip puts millions out of o ~ k (notethe cause-and-effect sequence in this statement). It is usuall.y a d ~ I t t e dthatwe have options. We can, for example, choose ~ t w e e n~ ·so?Iety wi:h greadyreduced wprking hours for everyone, and one with an ehte In f u l l ~ I ~ e~ o r kand a mass of permanently unemployed. But the range of optwns Is hmited,and limited by the new technology. It is the changes in technology thatare bringing about the new leisure society', or p ~ s ~ - ~ n d u s t r i ~ lsociety' :

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Our human role is at best to choose the most civilised vanant of this .d ~

technologically determine new society. . .Technological determinism is not always futunstic. t has ~ l s obeen

eq1ployed as an historical theory, explaining why past forms. of ~ C i e t y .cameinto being and passed away. While it would b ~an o v e r - s ~ ~ p h f i c ~ t 1 0topresent his theory as a s t r a i g h t f o r w ~ r dtechnological detern;nnism, histonanLynn White s account o ~ t ~ ec ~ m i n gabout of feudal society r,eveals ?o ';a technologically determinist history c ~ nbe constructe?· By f e u d a l i s ~

he means a 'society dominated by an anstocracy of warnors en.dowe? WI:hland (White 1978, 38). He a:tributes t ~ ec ~ m i n gabout of this s o C I ~ t yInWestern Europe to the inventiOn, and i f f u s w ~ w ~ s t w a r d s ,of. the stirr':lP·Prior to the stirrup, fighting on horseback was h m i t ~ dby the nsk of falhngoff. S wipe too vigorously with a sword, o ~lun.ge w i t ~ ~spear? and horseborne warriors could find themselves lying IgnominiOusly In the dust.Because the stirrup offered riders a m u c ~more s.ecure p o s i ~ i o non .the horse,it 'effectively welded horse and nder Into a single fighting unit c a p a b l ~

of a violence without precedent (ibid., 2). But the ~ o u n t e ds h o e ~combatit made possible was an expensive as well as an effective way of dmng ~ t t l e .

It required intensive training, armour n dwar ho:ses. It could be s u s t a i _ ? ~

only be a re-organisation of society ?esigned s p e C I ~ c a l l ~t ~support an. ehteof mounted warriors able and equipped to fight In this new and highly

specialized way (ibid., 38).

Does technology have effects ?

The example of the stirrup and feudalism, however.' ~ h o w sus the P.roblemsof the second aspect of technological determinism, the clmm that

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Introductory essay

t e c h n o l o g i ~ a lc h a n g ~c a ~ s e ss.ocial change. Leaving aside issues ofarchaeological .and h i ~ t o n c a levidence (for which see Hilton and Sawyer1963), we can I m ~ e d m t e l ?note a grave difficulty in seeing the stirrup asthe cause of feudalism: White himself identifies it (1978, 28): a new devicemerely opens a door; It does not compel one to enter . The device itself doesnot fo.rce s o c i ~ t i e sto adopt it. We know of plenty of instances where technologies l a t ~ rjudged useful or essential were not taken up, or at least weres t r o n g ~r ~ s i s t e d( f r a classic ?iscussion of this, see Morison 1966). 4 Thec ~ ~ _ ~ ~ : e ~ z s t z c sof a o ~ z e t yplay a r:zaJor part in deciding which.technologies are a d o p t e a ~Once we admit .this - and It Is hard to see how it can justifiably be denied -technology begins to look r a t ~ e rless like a genuinely independent factor.

Even more damaging to a simple technological determinism is the factthat the same technology can have very different effects) in different situations. Amongstthe Franks, the stirrup caused feudalism. But it had no such effect insay, A?glo-Saxon n g l a n dp r i o ~to the Norman Conquest. There is n o t h i n ~

essentially mystenous about this. To explain why the creation of a feudalsystem was a t t e ~ p t e d ,and to explain why it was possible, inevitably requiresreferenc: to a wider set of social condit ions than military technology alone -the dechne In E u r o p ~ a . ntrade, which made land the only reliable sourceof ~ e a l t h ;the p o s ~ I b ~ h t y.(under some c.ircumstances and not others) of

s e 1 z 1 ~ ~land for redistnbutwn to feudal knights; and so on. Since these otherconditiOns . are not necessarily the same everywhere, it is not surprisingthat the s t ~ r r u pdid not everywhere have the same effects . Indeed, itb e c o ~ e sdifficult to see why technology should be singled out for specialattentiOn, :ather than be treated as one condition amongst many others.

So the Idea of technology having straightforward social effects is~ l t o g ~ t h e rtoo si.mple. Assessing the effects on society of a given technologyIs an n t e n s e ~ ydifficult and problemati: exercise, despite the apparent clarityof the questiOn and the frequent desire of research sponsors to know itsanswer. Take ~ n ep r ~ s s i n gexample- the effect of the microchip onemployment. It Is relatively easy to guess what proportion of existing jobscould be .automated away by r ~ s e n t~ rprospective computer technology.But that s not the e f ~ e c tf the microchip on employment, precisely becausethe questwn cannot justifiably be approached in isolation like this. To knowthe microchip s effect on employment levels, one needs to know the differentrates at which i ~will b ~adopted ~ cliff r ent locations, the likely siting andnature f the Industnes producing computer technology, the indirecte c o n o m i ~e f f e c t ~of the creation and destruction of obs, the likely role oftrade unwn actiOn and government policy, the interaction of all of thesedevelopments in one country with what goes on in other countries thegrowth or decline, and changing patterns, of the world economy ( s e ~ ,forexample, Freeman, .Clark and ~ o e t e1982, Cooper and Clark 1982). Inother words, ans_wenng the questwn of the effects on society of a particulart e c h n ? l o g ~~ e q u i r e sone to have a good theory of how that society works.The SimpliCity of the question is misleading. Answering it properly will

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Introductory essay

often require an understanding of the overall dynamics of a society, andit is thus one of the most difficult, rather than one of the easiest, questionsto answer.

It would be terrio1y mistaken, however, to jump from the conclusionthat technology s effects are not simple to the conclusion that technologyhas no effects. That is our reason for including in this collection the articleby Langdon Winner. His is one· of the most thoughtful attempts to

undermine the notion that technologies are in themselves inherentlyneutrp.r:=·tn:ar-alttliat·matlers is the way-soci:erieschoose fa--use them.Technologies, he argues, ~ nl:Je i n ~ ~ I ' ~ I 1 1 1 Y - - P O l i t i c : a l .This is so, he says,in two senses. Technologi es can be designed, consciously or unconsciously,to open certain social options and close others. Thus New York builderRobert Moses designed road systems to facilitate the travel of certain typesof people and to hinder that of others. Secondly, he argues that not onlyare certain design features of technologies inherently political, but sometechnologies in their entirety are political. Even if it is mistaken to seetechnologies as requiring particular patterns of social relations to go alongwith them, some technologies are, in given social circumstances, morecompatible with some social relations than with others. Hence, argues Winner,basing energy supply around a nuclear technology that requires plutoniummay enhance pressure for stronger state surveillance to prevent the theftof plutonium, and help erode traditional civil liberties.

Furthermore, the adoption of particular technologies is of long-term aswell as immediate significance: technologies cannot always be traded inat will. Road and rail systems remain- and influence patterns of housingand industrial development -long after their designers are dead. A nationalelectricity grid is a massive embodied investment that no society wouldlightly scrap -ye t a national grid may well cause bias towards huge,centralised energy sources such as nuclear power rather than small-scale,local sources of solar or wind power. Adoption of nuclear energy now willleave generations to cpme in need of technologies for nuclear waste management, even if they have themselves abandoned nuclear power. Marx once

wrote (Marx 1968, 97) that people make their own history, but they do notmake it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosenby themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given andtransmitted from the past . Amongst the circumstances transmitted from thepast is, often significantly, the technological legacy of previous generations.

Finally, technology s consequences are directly biological and ecologicalas well as social. Technologies can and do feed, clothe and provide shelterfor us; they can and do also kill and poison. Technologies can preserveor degrade our environment; and ecological critique of technologies hasbecome of great importance, playing for example an important role inblocking the development in the United States of a supersonic transportaircraft analogous to Concorde (Horwitch 1982). In moves to construct analternative or radical technology, benign ecological consequences are

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central (Dickson 1974, Boyle and Harper 1976). The environmental riskpose? by a t e . c ~ ~ ~ l o g yis not a simple matter. How societies percei ve thephysical possibilities and constraints inherent in their environments andthe risks they s e ~those environments as subject to, are intensely a r i ~ b l eboth b e t v ~ e e nd i ~ f e r e n t .societi.es and, sometimes, within them (Douglas1975). It Is notonously Impossible to find consensus on the environmentalrisk posed by o n t r o v e ~ s i a l:echnologies such as nuc lear power. Once again,though, to say that bwlogical or ecological effects are complex is not tosay that they are non-existent.

What shapes technology?

Important, though .these questions are, the problematic nature oftechnology s effects Is not the central theme of this reader. Our focus -and where our criticism of technological determinism would centre - is onthe assumption that technological change is autonomous outside of the~ o c i e t yin which it takes :place. Our question is, w h a t , c h p ; p ~ s - t h etechnologyI l , ~ C .~ ) : s tp l ~ c ebefore It has effects ? Particularly, what role doessoci-etyplay In shaping technology?

A ~explained above, the most common answer to this question has societyp l a y i n ~at b ~ s ton y a marginal role .. Science, it is said, shapes technology

~ n ?science Itself Is discovery of reahty, unaffected by the society in whichIt Is conducted. .

T h e ~ eare. several things wrong with this notion. First, we now know~ h ~ tSCience zs affected at the most profound level by the society in whichIt Is conducted. Not only has th e social context affected the rate and directionof the growth of science (that much is obvious), but studies have shownnumerous cases where the models and images used in scientific theo rieshav: been. drawn from the wider society and where social and politicalconsideratiOns have entered into scientists evaluations of different theories~ s t r ~ eor false: Even the level of fact - of experiment and observation S social, and different groups of scientists in different circumstances havebeen s.hown to have produced radically different facts . Several recentcollectiOns (Barnes and Shapin 1979, Collins 1981 and 1982 Barnes andEd?e 1982, ~ n o r r - C e t i n aarid Mulkay 1983) and an i m p o ~ t a n tsurveyarticle (Shapin 1982) offer a useful introduction to this literature.

Further, it is now increasingly realised that science and technology haveY ~ omeans al:ways been closely co nnected activities. Looking backwards

Is t ; I c ~ yb ~ c a u s ~people in previous times did not operate with our notionsof science. a n ~technology (Mayr 1976), and there is some controversyamongst .histonans who have studied the issue (see, for example, Mussonand Robinson 1969, Mathias 1972). But it can be concluded that beforethe latter part of the nineteenth century the contribution of activities wewould now think of as science to what we would call technology was often

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Introductory ess y

marginal. The watermill, the plough, ~ h e .spinn.ing w h e e ~ ,the spinningjenny, even the steam n g ~ n ~- t h e ~ ecrunalinventwns were In no real sensethe application of pre-existing s n e ~ c e~ e e ,for ~ x a m p l eCardwell 1971and 1972b). Rhetoric about the contnbuti?n of scie.nce to technology t h ~ r e

was in plenty, but the rhetoric often b?re httle r e l a t ~ o nto the m o d e ~ trealityof that contribution, and needs to be Interpreted differently (Shapin 1972,335-6). . .

Where science and technology are connected, as they Increasingly havebeen in this century, it is mistaken to see the connecti_?n between themas one in which technology is one-sidedly e p e n d e n t.on science. T ~ c h n o l o g y

has arguably contributed as much to science ~ s VICe v e ~ s a -think of thegreat dependence of science on the computer, w i t h m ~ tw h i c ~some modernscientific specialties could scarcely have come Into existence. Mostimportantly, where t e c h n o l o ~ ydoes ~ r a won s c ~ e n c ethe ~ ~ t u r :of. h a ~

relation is not one of technologists obediently working out the I m p h c a ~ w n s

of a scientific advance. Technologists use science. They seek from scienceresources to help them solve the problems they have, to achieve the goalstowards which they are working. These problems .and goals ~ r e at. leastas important in explaining what th :y do as t h ~ s n e n ~ ethat S availablefor them to use. Again, we are deahng here With an Issue that has beenfully documented in recent literature: 5 . .

Another way of arguing that technical change S a u t o n o ~ o u sS muchless common but more plausible. t is to say, not that science s ~ a p e s

technology but that technology sh pes technology (see Ellul1964, 85-94, Winner1977, 57-73). To understand the force of this argument,. it is n e c ~ s s a r y

· to see what is wrong with our common, but wholly mystified, notiOn ofthe heroic inventor. According to that notion, great inventions occur when,in a flash of genius, a radically new idea ~ e s e . n t si ~ s e l f~ m o s tready-formedin the inventor s mind. This way of thinking Is reinforced by popularhistories of technology, in which to each device is ~ t t a c h e d ~precise dateand a particular man (few indeed are the women In such hsts) to whomthe inspired invention belongs:. . . . . . .

One important attack on this InspiratiOnal noti?n of I n v e n t w ~~ a smounted by the group of American writers, most Importantly W i l l i ~ m

Ogburn, who from the 1920s onwards set t h ~ m s e l v e sthe ~ s kof constructinga sociology of technology (Westrum 1983). In a 1922 article, Ogburn andhis collaborator Dorothy Thomas argued that far from. bei.ng the result ofunpredictable flashes of inspiration, inventions were z n e v z t a b l ~ .Once thenecessary constituent cultural elements are p r e s e ~ t -n:ost I m p o r t a ~ t l y

including component technologies - there is a s e ~ s e I ~which an InventiOnmust occur. Given the boat and the steam engine, Is not the s t e a m b ~ a t

inevitable? (Ogburn and Thomas 1922, 90.) They regarded it as c r ~ c i a l

evidence for the inevitability of invention that a great many InventiOnswere in fact made independently by more than one person.

Not the least of the difficulties in this position is that apparent



Introductory essay

inventions of the same thing turn out on closer inspection to be ofimportantly different things (Constant 1978). A solidly based critique ofthe i ~ s p i r a t i o n a lnotion of invention can, however, be constructed directly,drawing on the work of writers such as Ogburn s contemporary Usher

~ 9 5 4 ~ ,his colleague Gilfillan (1935a and 1935b) and, more recently,histonans of technology like Thomas P. Hughes (1971 and 1983; see alsopp. 39-52 of this book). Hughes s work is of particular relevance because

much of it focuses on classic great inventor figures such as Thomas Edison(credited ~ i t h .the invent ion of, amongst other things, the gramophone andthe electnc hghtbulb) and Elmer Sperry (famed for his work on thegyrocompass and marine and aircraft automatic pilot).

Hughes has no interest in disparaging the achievements of those he writesabout- indeed he has the greatest respect for t hem- but his workdemonstrates that invention is not a matter of a sudden flash of inspirationfrom which a new device emerges ready made . Largely it is a matter ofthe minute and painstaking modification of existing technology. It is acreative and imaginative process, but that imagination lies above all inseeing ways in which existing devices can be improved, and in extendingthe scope of techniques successful in one area into new areas.

A vitally important type of technical change altogether escapes our

conventional notion of invention . Technical change, in the words ofGilfillan (1935a, 5) is often a perpetual accretion oflittle details probablyhaving neither begining, completion nor definable limits , a process Gilfillansaw at work in the gradual evolution of the ship (1935b). The authors ofthis process are normally anonymous, certainly not heroic inventor figures,and often skilled craft workers, wi thout formal technical or scientific training;it is probably best seen as a process of collective learning rather than individual innovation. Learning by doing in making things (Arrow 1962) andwhat Rosenberg (1982, 120-40) calls learning by using - feedback fromexperience of use into both the design and way of operating things -are bothof extreme practical importance. Individually small changes may add up toan overall considerable improvement in design, productivity or effectiveness.

New technology, then, typically emerges not from flashes of disembodiedinspiration but from existing technology, by a process of gradual changeto, and new combinations of, that existing technology. Even what we mightwith some justification want to call revolutions in technology turn out tohave been long in the making. Constant s important study (1980) of thechange in aircraft propulsion from the propeller to the jet shows this clearly.Revolutionary as it was in the context of aircraft propulsion, the turbo jetbuilt upon a long tradition of work in water and gas turbines.

Existing technology is thus, we would argue, an important preconditionof new technology. It provides the basis of devices and techniques to bemodified, and is a rich set of intellectual resources available for imaginativeuse in new settings. But is it the only force shaping new technology? Wewould say that it is not, and that this can be seen by examining the two

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Introductory essay

most plausible attempts to argue that x i s ~ i n gt e c h ~ o l o g yis more t h a ~j ~ s t

a precondition of new technology, but Is an active shaping force In Itsdevelopment. These attempts focus around the ideas of technologicalparadigm and technological system . _ .

The idea of technological paradigm (see Constant 1980, Dosi 1982)is an analogical extension of Thomas Kuhn s idea f the s c i ~ n t i f l cp a ~ a d i g m

(1970). In Kuhn s work, paradigm has two m ~ I nmeanings, w h i ~ ha ~ e

inter-related by distinguishable. In the more basic sense, the paradigm IS

an exemplar, a particular scientific problem-solution that is accepted assuccessful and which becomes the basis for future work. Thus Newton sexplanation of the refraction of light, in terms of f?rces act ing on the particleshe believed light to consist in, formed a p a r a ~ h ~ mfor m u ~subsequentwork in optics - researchers sought to produce similar explanatiOns for otheroptical phenomena (Worrall 1982). The para?igm in this i r s ~sense ofexemplar plays a crucial part in the paradigm In the second, wider senseof the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on sharedby the members of a given [scientific] community (Kuhn 1970, 1 7 5 ~

The discussion of paradigms in technology has been less profound than Itmight have been because it (like discussions of extensions o ~Kuhn s i d e ~ stothe social sciences) has tended to focus on the second r _ n e a ~ n ? g~ f p a r a ~ I g m

despite Kuhn s explicit statement that the first meaning S philosophically. deeper (ibid.; see Barnes 1982).7 But there is no doubt that theconcept of paradigm applied to technological change does point us towardsimportant phenomena. Particular technical achievements have played acrucial role as exemplars, as models for further devel opment (see Sahal1981aand 1981b). In the field of missile technology, discussed in Part o ~ rbelow,the German V- 2 missile played this role in early post-war Amen can andSoviet missile development. Because technological knowledge cannot bereduced to a set of verbal rules, the presence of a concrete exemplar is a vitalresource for thought. The Americans possessed actual German-built V-2s,as well as most of the design team; the Soviets painstakingly constructed,with help from some of the designers, replicas of the original missile (Ordwayand Sharpe 1979). To a significant extent the V-2 form.ed the m ~ d e lf ~ o m

which further ballistic missiles were derived by consciOus modificatiOn.f we find technologists operating with a paradigm - taking one technical

achievement and modelling future work on that achievement- it becomestempting to treat this as somehow self-explaining and discuss it in termsof mechanical analogies such as following a technical trajectory (D?si1982). But to do this would be to miss perhaps the most fundamental pmntof Kuhn s concept of paradigm: the paradigm is not a rule that can befollowed mec hanica lly, bl,lt a resource to be used. There will always be morethan one way of using a resource, of developing the paradigm. Indeed,groups of technologists in different circumstances often develop the sameparadigm differently. American and Soviet missile designers, for example,developed significantly different missiles, despite their shared use of the

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ntroductory essay

V-2 as d e ~ a r t u r epoint (Holloway 1977 and 1982, Berman and Baker 1982).Where this. does not a p ~ e nw h ~ r ethere is congruity in the c evelopmentand extenswn of a paradigm, this stands equally in need of explanation.

Just how much can be hidden by considering the further developmento f ~ ~ a r a d i g mas simply a technological trajectory following an internall o ~ ce m e ~ g e s f r o ~another study by Hughes (1969). Here the trajectorybeing considered Is that of successive processes for synthesising chemicalsby hydrogenation - combination with hydrogen at high temperatures andpressures over catalysts. Hughes examines the trajectory of this work inth.e German c ~ e m i ~ a lfirm I G. Farben and its predecessors. BeginningWith the p ~ r a d i g mInstance of the Haber- Bosch process for the synthesisof ammonia, the company moved on to the synthesis of wood alcohol andfinally of petrol (from coal). A natural trajectory, indeed- but one that,Hughes shows, at each stage was conditioned by social factors inside andoutside the firm, including, most consequentially, the German state s needfor wartime independence from external sources of raw materials. InAmerica, the chemical giant Du Pont adopted synthetic processes for theproduction o ~ammonia and wood alcohol (Mueller 1964), but did not,In that very different environment, find the step to the synthesis of petrolnatural : In Germany, moving to petrol synthesis involved greater and

greater hnks between ~ a r b e nand the Nazi state, links which eventuallyled twenty-three executives of Farben to the dock in the Nuremburg WarCrimes Tribunals.

The idea of technological system has been used a great deal more widelythan that of technological paradigm, and thus the characteristics ofexplanations framed in its terms are more evident. We will follow its usageby Thomas Hughes, who makes it in many ways the central theme of his~ t u d i e sof technology. 8 Typically, and increasingly, t e c h n o l o g i ~ scome notIn the form of separate, isolated devices but as part of a whole, as part

fa system. An u t o m a t i ~:vashing machine, say, can work only if integratedInto the systems of electnCity supply, water supply and drainage. A missile,to take another example, is itself an ordered system of component par tswarhead, guidance, control, propulsion- and also part of a wider systemof launch equipment and command and control networks.

The need for a part to integrate into the whole imposes major constraintson how ~ h a tpart s ~ o u l dbe designed. Edison, as Hughes shows (pp. 40 -50), designed the hght bulb not as an isolated device but as part of asystem of electricity generation and distribution, and the needs of the systemare clearly to be seen in the design of the bulb. Further, the integrationof technologies into systems gives rise to a particular pattern of innovationthat Hughes, using a military metaphor, describes as reverse salients (seefor example,·Hughes 1971, 273 and 1983, 14; for related observations seeRosenberg 1976, 111-12). The reverse salient is a product of unevende.v.elopment. ~ is an .area where the growth of technology lags, like am1htary front hne which has been pushed forward but where in one

2

ntroductory essay

particular spot the enemy still holds out. Technologists focus inventive effort,like generals focus their forces, on the elimination of such reverse salients;a successful inventor or engineer defines the reverse salient as a set of 'criticalproblems that, when solved, will correct the situation. A typical reversesalient appeared in the development of electricity supply systems. Astransmission voltages were increased, power was lost between the linesthrough electric discharge. Because very high voltages were needed totransmit electricity over large distances, loss between the lines was· a reversesalient that threatened the development of the electricity supply system asa whole. Consequently, considerable effort was devoted to solving the criticalproblems involved (Hughes 1976 and 1983).

The focusing of innovation on reverse salients is a phenomenon of greatgenerality. Hughes s judgement is that innumerable (probably most)inventions and technological developments result from efforts to correctreverse salients (1983, 80). While this is thus an important way in whichtechnology (as technological systems) shapes technology, does it imply thatonly t ~ c h n o l o g yshapes technology? Hughes s answer is no , and the reasonfor that answer is of considerable importance.

he economic shaping o technology

The very concept of reverse salient makes sense only if a technologicalsystem is seen as oriented to a goal (Hughes 1983, 80). Otherwise, anymetaphors of advancing or of backward parts become meaningless.Language of this kind is dangerous if it is allowed to slip towards vaguetalk of the cultural need for a technology (Ogburn and Thomas 1922,92). But the notion of a goal can be given a direct and down-to-earthmeaning. Most importantly, talk of a system goal is normally talk abouteconomics, about reducing costs and increasing revenues.

Electricity supply systems, for example, have been private or publicenterprises, and those who have run them have inevitably been concerned

above allabout

costs, profitsand

losses.The

reverse salient isan

'inefficientor uneconomical component (Hughes 1983, 80), and for many practicalpurposes inefficient means uneconomical.

So technological reasoning and economic reasoning are often inseparable.Our extract from Hughes s work demonstrates this in the case of Edison sinvention of the light bulb. Edison was quite consciously the designer ofa system. H e intended to generate electricity, transmit it to consumers,and to sell them the apparatus they needed to make use of it. T o do sosuccessfully he had to keep h i ~costs as low as possible- not merely becausehe and his financial backers wished for the largest possible profit, but becauseto survive at all electricity had to compete with the existing gas systems.Crucially, Edison believed he had to supply electric light at a cost at leastas low as that at which gas light was supplied. These economic calculations

3



Introductory essay

entered directly into his work on the light bulb. A crucial system cost, a reversesalient, was the copper for the wires that conducted electricity. Less coppercould be used if these wires had to carry less current. Simple but crucialsci:nce w as available to him as a resource: Ohm s and joule s laws fromw h i c ~he I ~ f e r r e dtha.t what was needed to keep the current low and the lightsupphed high was a hght bulb filament with a high electrical resistance, andtherefore with a relatively high voltage as compared to current. Having thus? e ~ e r m i n e d ,economically as much as technologically, its necessary characterIstics, finding the correct filament then became a matter of hunt-and- try .. T ~ e.precise :haracteristics of the Edison case are perhaps untypical. EvenIn his time Edison was unusual in his conscious, individual grasp of then ~ t u r eo f t e c ~ n o l o g i c a lsystems (therein, perhaps, lay his success), and sincehis time the Inventor-entrepreneur has in many areas been overshadowedby the giant corporation with research and development facilities. MenloPark, Edison s research and development institution, was only an aspectof the beginning of the great transformation brought about by the largescale, systematic harnessing of science and technology to corporate objectives( N ~ b e1977). But the essential point remains: typically, technologicaldecisiOns are also economic decisions.. P a r a d o x i c a ~ l y ,then, the. compelling nature of much technological change

Is best explained by seeing technology not as outside of society, astechnologica determinism would have it, but as inextricably part of society.f echnological systems are economic enterprises, and if they are involved

directly or indirectly in market competition, then technical change is forcedon them. f they are to survive at all, much less to prosper, they cannotforever stand still. Technical change is made inevitable, and its nature anddirection profoundly conditioned, by this. And when national economiesare linked by a competitive world market, as they have been at least sincethe m i d - n i n e t e ~ n t hcentury, technical change outside a particular countrycan exert massive pressure for technical change inside it.

These simple but overwhelmingly important aspects of technical changewere perhaps most clearly identified by Karl Marx, who attributed to them~ h eunprecedented technical dynamism of the capitalist system. Marx sInsights here have been pursued less sytematically than one might haveexpected. As Nathan Rosenberg has put it, Marx s analysis of technologicalchange opened doors to the study of the technological realm through whichhardly anyone has subsequently passed (1982, viii). Nevertheless, thereremains a great deal to be learned about technology from the economicliterature.

One major area of study has been research on the contribution oftechnological change to economic growth. Econ omic growth does not resultsimply from increases in the quantities of capital and labour employed.After th e effects of these are taken into consideration, a substantial residualremains which represents, at least in part, the effect of technical change(see, for example, Abramovitz 1956, Solow 1957, Matthews, Feinstein and

14

Introductory essay

Odling-Smee 1982). While this is a question of the effects of technology,other economists have studied the causes of technical change. In a classicand controversial study, Schmookler ( 1966) argued that the rate of inventiveactivity, as measured by patent statistics, reflected market demand forces,and more recent authors have argued that demand pull is crucial not justin invention but in the processes leading to marketable innovation (for auseful critical review, see Mowery and Rosenberg 1982). Others havefocused on the subsequent processes of diffusion of a technologicalinnovation. Amongst the best-known pieces of work here is Griliches' studyof the effect of profitability on the rate of adoption by American farmersof high-yield hybrid corn (Griliches 1957 and 1960; see also Dixon 1980,Griliches 1980). Griliches argued that the rate of adoption of hybrid cornwas faster in areas where it promised more profit than in the areas whereits profitability was less.

This may seem an unsurprising result; in a capitalist economy profitconsiderations and technical change are invariably closely connected.It has, however, proved difficult to specify the precise form of thatconnection. The 'neo-classical' assumption that a firm will choose thetechnique of production that offers the maximum possible rate of profitis, despite its apparent plausibility, the subject of increasing criticism within

economics. The issues involved are complex - there is a useful review ofthem in Elster (1983)- hut they hinge upon whether human decision-makingdoes, or indeed could, conform to the strict requirements of the neoclassical' model. For example, how can a firm possibly know when it hasfound the technique of production that produces maximum profits? Is itnot more reasonable to assume that a firm will consider only a very limitedrange from the set of possible options, and will be happy with a 'satisfactory'(and not necessarily maximum) profit rate? In the new approachesdeveloping within economics, inspiration is being found in the work ofJoseph Schumpeter (1934, 1939, 1943 and 1951), with its emphasis on theaspects of innovation that go beyond, and cannot be explained by, rationalcalculation. 9

Technology economics and social relations

A further step is necessary in order to appreciate fully that the economicshaping :o echnology is in fact the social shaping o echnology. This step, again, is oneof Marx s - the realisation that economic calculation and economic lawsare specific to particular forms of society, not universal (see, for example,Marx 1976, 173-6). Even if in all societies people have to try to reckonthe costs and benefits of particular design decisions and technical choices,the form taken by that reckoning is importantly variable.

This emerges clearly, if controversially in the work of Bhaduri on agriculture in India (1973; see also Bhaduri 1983, Elster 1983, 172). Bhaduri argues

15

F



Introductory essay

that the social relations in east Indian agriculture differ from those typical infully developed capitalist farming, and that the way technology is shaped byeconomic considerations thus differs. While other authors would notcompletely agree with the way he describes Indian agriculture (see Griffin1979, xv), the overall point made by Bhaduri is an important one, and ithas been echoed in more general form by others (for example, Brenner 1977).

Most of the peasants in the villages studied by Bhaduri were kishansWhile legally free to move (and thus not classic feudal serfs), they are in

practice tied to their land, and to their landowner, by a cycle of indebtedness.Part of each harvest goes to the landowner as his legal share, another partto the landowner as repayment with interest on previous loans. This leavesthe kishans with insufficient food for their consumption needs until the nextharvest. Hence they are forced to borrow from their landowner (lackingmortgagable assets, they cannot borrow from banks), and the cycle ofeffective bondage continues.

A consequence s that it becomes rational for landowners to resist technicalchange that boosts the productivity of the land to such a level that the kishansmay escape debt-bondage. Increased productivity would increase thelandowner s profits - for he receives a share, limited by law, of around60 per cent of the total crop. But if the total crop increases so much that

the remaining 40 per cent enables kishans to pay off their debts and escapefurther indebtedness, then the social relation that is the basis of much ofthe landowner s power will be destroyed, and his future income from usurywill vanish. So, Bhaduri suggests, resistance to such technologies as tubewells need not be explained by vague notions of cultural backwardness .It is, rather, the result of rational calculation (Bhaduri even provides aquantitative model of its possible operation) operating in a different socialframework from that of fully developed capitalism.

A similar conclusion emerges from studies of innovation in Sovietindustry. Here, too, it is plausible to assume that people make calculationsas to what serves their economic interests, and plant managers have greaterautonomy to do so than is often assumed. But again the social frameworkof that calculation is different. Here, the crucial fact is that prices are setby central planners of the State Price Committee, rather than being subjectto the vagaries of the market as in the West. A price, we might say, isthus a different social relation in the Soviet Union.

In its classical form, the system of rewards to Soviet managers hingesupon quantity of production in the short r u fulfilling the norms of theplan in the current quarter. The focus on quantity implies that while smalltechnological innovations may be welcomed, larger changes (for example,changes that mean elaborate retooling) are a threat; developing a newproduct means courting risks with little promise of more than commensuratereward if successful. The reforms that Soviet leaders have introduced toalleviate this situation have, paradoxically, often made it worse. Thus the1965 economic reforms tied the rewards to managers more closely to the

16

Introductory essay

profitability of their enterprises. But because the price system was notfundamentally changed, the greatest profits could be earned byconcentrating on existing products whose costs of production had fallenwell below their (bureaucratically set) prices. Innovation, instead of speedingup, actually slowed (Parrott 1983, 225-6; for further discussion ofinnovation in Soviet industry, see Berliner 1976, Amann 19-82).

It should not be assumed that the only question at issue here is the rateof innovation. A socialist society might develop a qualitatively different

form of technology than a capitalist one. In Part Two of this book we willsee that there is a strong argument to be made that the nature of thetechnology of production in a capitalist society is such as to embody thecapitalist s ne ed for control over the worker as one determining factor. Ifa socialist society came into being free of this need for control, thenpresumably its technology would evolve differently. It would be f o o l i s ~toassume that existing nominally socialist societies such as the Soviet U nwnor China are free of a need to control workers, and attempts to use Sovietor Chinese technology to investigate this question have tended to lead toconfused, ambiguous or contradictory results (Fleron 1977). Abstractdiscussion of the issue has also been inconclusive, Marcuse (1968) andHabermas (1971) disagreeing as to whether a fundamentally different new

science or new technology was a logical possibility.The point that economic calculation is shaped by its social frameworkhas relevance, though, even if we set aside general issues of pre-capitalistand socialist societies. Economic calculation presupposes a structure of coststhat is used as the basis for that calculation. But a cost is not an isolated,arbitrary number of pounds or dollars. It can be affected by, and itselfaffect, the entire way a society is organised. This point emerges most sharplywhen we consider the cost o labour a vital issue in technical change, becausemuch innovation is sponsored and justified on the grounds that it saveslabour costs.

To take a classic example, because of the different circumstances ofnineteenth -century British and American societies (such as the absence in~ r i t i nof a frontier· of available agricultural land), labour cost more inAmerica than in Britain. Hence, argued Habakkuk (1962), there was amuch greater stimulus in America than in Britain to search for laboursaving inventions, and thus a different pattern of technological change inthe two societies. Habakkuk s claim has in fact proven controversial (seeSaul 1970 and Uselding 1977 for introductions to the controversy), butthe general point remains: the way a society is organised, and its overallcircumstances, affect its typical pattern of costs, and thus the nature oftechnological change within it.

An important instance of this leads us directly into a central concernof this reader, the relationship between gender and technological change. A featureof nearly all known societies is that the biological distinctions of s e ~aretranslated into widely different gender roles. Women and men typically

17



ntroductory essay

do different things: there is a gender division of labour that cannot beaccounted for simply in terms of different biologies (Oakley 1972). Inthis division of labour the activities of men are generally valued morehighly than those of women. Men dominate the public sphere , and womenare either under-represented in, or completely excluded from, the centraldecision-making arena s of most societies. In societies like ours, where wehave developed a private sphere of child-rearing and domesticity, it isto the private that women are stereotypically relegated. Even if motherhoodis celebrated in rhetoric, in practice it means either economic hardship oreconomic deper1dency on a male breadwinner .

A simultaneous cause and effect of this overall social pattern is thatwomen s wage labour costs employers considerably less, on average, thanthat of men. Our third extract, drawn from an important review articleby Ruth Schwartz Cowan, suggests two ways in which this affectstechnological change. First, employers may seek forms of technologicalchange that enable them to replace expensive unionised male workers withcheaper and/or non-unionised female workers. Secondly, because a newmachine has to pay for itself in labour costs saved, technological changemay be slower in industries where there is an abundant supply of cheapwomen s labour.

Economics social relations and the state

Social relations, then, affect technological change through the way that theyshape the framework of economic calculations. But this is far from the onlyway in which society shapes technology.

There are intrinsic limits to economic calculation, especially in regardto technological innovation. This is a fact that economists themselves areincreasingly recognising. 1 T o turn an invention into a marketableinnovation is not an instantaneous process, and can indeed take as longas a decade or more. So economic calculation is aboutfoture costs, not presentcosts, and about uture market, not present market. Furthermore, the processof development from an initial invention to a marketable innovation is notclosely predictable: unexpected snags and barriers may be hit, unforeseendelays may take place, development costs may rise. The situation of theinnovator is not even one of quantifiable risk but of fundamental, irreducibleuncertainty (Schon 1982).

So economiG; calculations about technological innovation are open tochallenge. They often seem primarily to be used to legitimate decisionsalready taken, rather than as the rational basis for decision. It is notoriousthat large technological projects (new weapons systems, nuclear powerstations, Concorde, rapid transit systems) almost always end up costingenormously more than initially estimated, in part at least because anoptimistic initial estimate helps gain support for the project.1 1

8

ntroductory essay

Even projects within firms operating in an established market are subjectto the same process. In the study of synthetic petrol in Germany referredto above, Hughes 1969) shows how, within Farben, those opposed to, andthose in favour of, the synthetic petrol project produced contradictoryarguments about costs and profits. The o p p o n e n ~ spointe? to the ~ l l i n g

world market price of petrol, and the growing difficulty In produCing acompetitive synthetic alternative. The proponents pointed to existing unusedplant that could be brought into production, and thus h e g r e a ~ e rutilisationof fixed capital that would follow from the petrol proJeCt. Ultimately, costconsiderations were completely displaced as the criterion with which thesynthetic petrol project was judged. When synthetic petrol ~ h i e v e dlargescale production in 1930-31 its cost was 40-50 pfennigs per htre; the worldmarket price of petrol had then slumped to 5 pfennigs per litre (Hughes1969, 122). But the project was not scrapped. The interest of the Germanstate, especially after the 1933 Nazi takeover, in getting control overstrategically important raw materials was too great.

Another instance of immediate cost and profit considerations beingoverridden arises in Winner s article (pp. 29-30). In a discussion thatanticipates our material in Part Two, Winner refers to the use of machineryby businessman Cyrus McCormick II to enable him to d i s m i ~ sskilled

workers and break their union. Once that purpose had been achieved, heabandoned the use of the machines. One could reformulate this as simplyMcCormick s pursuit of his long-term, rather than short-term, economicinterests. But another aspect of this episode is that McCormick anticipateda direct social effect of technology, and initiated technical change with thatin mind. Technologies may be designed and chosen with direct anticipatedeffects on social relations in mind.

The freedom of firms in a competitive market to do this, if it does implyviolating cost and profit considerations, is circumscribed. One crucial roleof the state with respect to technical change is that it is much less directlyconstrained in this way. The German state, for example, could and didallow strategic considerations to outweigh immediate cost ones on a massivescale. The sponsoring of technical innovation by the state is a topic ofpersistent importance. From antiquity onwards, states have sponsored andshaped technological projects, often projects on a vast scale. Lewis Mumfordhas provided a classic account of this, and it is worth quoting from a shortsummary of his ideas 1964, 3):

authoritarian technics . . . begins around the fourth millenium B.C. in anew configuration of technical invention, scientific observation, andcentralized political control . . . . The new authoritarian technology wasnot limited by village custom or human sentiment: its herculean feats ofmechanical organization rested on ruthless physical coercion, forced labourand slavery, which brought into existence [human-powered] machines that

were capable of exerting thousands of horsepower.

19



ntroductory essay

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European states were interestedin technical progress, as a source of greater national power, populationand treasure (Pacey 1976, 174-203). This mercantilist framework carrieddifferent implications for the shaping of technology than did straightforwardly capitalist judgements. As Rafter (1979, 55-6) writes, while inEngland there was strong commitment to labor-saving devices, in Francethe mercantilist notion that work must be found for the largest numberof hands prevailed . As late as 1784, the brocade loom was praised in Francebecause it 'employed twice as many workers' as the plain-doth loom, itbeing argued that it was ' ' the benefit of labor which remains in the townswhen the products have left that is the real product of the manufactures(quoted, ibid., 56).

The single most important way that the state has shaped technology hasbeen through its sponsoring of military technology. War and its preparationhave probably been on a par with economic considerations as factors inthe history of technology. Like international economic competition, warand the threat of war act coercively to force technological change, withdefeat the anticipated punishment for those who are left behind. 12 Militarytechnology is the subject of Part Four of this reader, and we need onlymake one point here, regarding the extent to which military concerns have

shaped civilian technology. Military interest in new technology has oftenbeen crucial in overcoming what might otherwise have been insuperableeconomic barriers to its development and adoption, and military concernshave often shaped the development pattern and design details of newtechnologies. ·

Three cases in point are nuclear power, air transport and electronics.The initial work on the technology of nuclear energy was directly militaryin inspiration, and subsequently the economic drawbacks of nuclear powerhave often been overridden by state interest in securing fissile material foratomic weapons and in gaining 'autonomous' national energy supplies.These state interests closely shaped reactor design, at least in the early yearsof nuclear energy (Gowing 1982, Riidig 1983, Simpson 1983). Similarly,the civilian jet airliners of the post-war period were made possible by ageneration of work on military jets, and Constant (1980, 166-7) arguesthat the design of 1930s Brit ish and German civil airliners reflected theways in which those countries airlines were chosen instruments' of foreignand imperial policy.

Much of the development of electronics in this century has beensponsored by the military, especially in the United States. Military needand military support played a crucial role in the development of the digitalcomputer (Goldstine 1972, Dinneen and Frick 1977). Braun andMacDonald's history (1978) shows the crucial role of military support inthe development of semiconductor electronics (and thus in the origins ofthe microchip). That support was particularly important in the early phaseof development when on most commercial criteria solid-state devices were

20

ntroductory essay

decisively inferior to existing valve technology. Nor is military involvement in electronics past history alone. In Britain, and even moreso in the United States, attempts are currently being made, backedwith very large sums of money, to shape new computer and componenttechnologies to military needs (Beresford 1983, Sun 1983; though seealso Mowery 1983, who is sceptical about the likely success ofthis).

I t o u l d _ b _ e ~ a _ m i s t a k ~ t o ~i v _ o r c ~s _ t a t e . s h ~ _ p i n g ~gf ~ < : : . h r : o J Q g y _ f r

economic: shaping' c > f j e c l n ~ ( ) l o g y .Here is not the place to enter into thecomplex and difficult debate about the determinants of state action (see,for example, Holloway and Picciotto 1978). But for a considerable periodof time technologists for private industry have been provided by stateeducational institutions (see, for example, Cardwell1972a). There has beenin this century an increasing perception that the state should supply notmerely technologists, but also technology itself, where private industry isunable or unwilling to do so. State intervention of this kind is fraught withcontradiction (Hirsch 1978 suggests some general reasons why this is so).But such state intervention is perhaps also inescapable. The current waveof Western reactions to Japan's announcement of its fifth generation'programme in electronics and computer science is a case in point (see, for

example, Feigenbaum and McCorduck 1983).Domestic technology, the subject of Part Three of this reader, is anotherarea where cost and profit factors a re not the only ones at work, and wherewe can see the direct effects of the way society is organised. A s with stateshaped technology, it would be foolish to deny that cost and profit considerations are present: the production of cookers, washing machines, vacuumcleaners and refrigerators is extremely big business, and as we shall seethe interests of firms producing these have shaped what is available. Costconsiderations also have a vital influence on people's decisions aboutpurchasing such technology. Nevertheless, these economic factors have nothad free rein. The social prevalence of the single-family household- withits assumption of the essentially unaided female homemaker, and with itsassociation with widesprea d goals of privacy and autonomy- has profoundlystructured the form of technology that has become available. Domestictechnologies that cross the boundaries of the single-family household havebeen invented, but have persistently failed, even though ownership byindividual households is in many cases patently uneconomic in cost terms.The bias towards the individual household and individual housewife hashad important design consequences. Papanek and Hennessey (1977, 27)write:

Few tools in our society are designed for communal (or shared)ownership. f they were designed for sharing, rather than for individual

use, we believe they would change structurally, mechanically and in materialcomposition.

2



ntroductory essay

Technology and gender

So far, we have briefly examined two specific ways in which the genderdivision of our society has affected technological change: through thedifferent wages paid to women and men; and through the individualhousehold/individual-housewife pattern associated with the gender divisionoflabour. But neither of these specifics (which we examine further in PartTwo and Part Three of this reader) exhausts the connection between genderand technology.

Cynthia Cockburn s article Caught in the Wheels (pp. 55-65)focuses on the central general point: that technology is defined as a maleactivity. In the typical gender division of labour, some women s activitiesinvolve considerable skill. Knitting, for example, requires experience,manual dexterity and often no small amount of computation. But theseactivities are not normally defined as technologies. Technology, writesCockburn, is both the social property and one of the formative processesof men .

In this perspective, the often remarked absence or gross underrepresentation of women in engineering and technological work, and the

lack of con:iidence often felt by women faced with technology, becomes asymptom of a deeper problem. To say that technology is the social propertyof men is to say that it (perhaps with the sole exception of the dominanceof warfare by men) represents the strongest form of male dominance ofthe public sphere referred to above. Official plans to rectify the underrepresentation of women in engineering often proceed as if the problemwere to improve women s confidence , Cockbu rn writes. But maledominance of technology has in large part been secured by the activeexclusion of women from areas of technological work. The entry of womeninto technological work in Britain, America and Australia during the Firstand, especially, the Second World War was followed by an equally deliberateprocess of their expulsion from that work once the immediate crisis hadpassed (see, for example, Summerfield 1977, Enloe 1983, Chapter 7).

Technology, we emphasised above, can be seen as including not justthings themselves but the physical and mental know-how to make use ofthose things. Know-how is a resource that gives those who possess it a degreeof actual or potential power: for example, we shall see in Part Two that thepolitics of production technology often centre on this know-how. Here, thekey point is that technological know-how is a source of men s power- ofthe capacity, for example, to command higher incomes and scarce jobs. Inaddition to this, Cockburn s insistence that technology is one of theformative processes of men points to the role that appropriating technological know-how plays in constructing gender identities. Different childhoodexposure to technology, the prevalence of different role models, differentforms of schooling, and the extreme gender segregation of the job market

22

ntroductory essay

all lead to what Cockburn elsewhere describes as the construction of menas strong, manually able and technologically endowed, and women asphysically and technically incompetent (1983, 203).

This feminist analysis is q new perspective on technology, and itsimplications have yet to be fully developed, though the survey by McGaw( 1982) shows considerable work in progress in developing feministperspectives in the history of technology. But the questions raised byfeminism bear directly on the topic of the social shaping of technology.There is much work to be done in revealing the characteristics and processeswhereby, in Cockburn s phrase, industrial, commercial, militarytechnologies are masculine in a very historical and material sense . Thereis also important work to be done in discovering the origins and paths ofdevelopment of women s sphere technologies that seem often to have beenconsidered as beneath notice. As Cowan (1979, 52) notes:

The indices to the standard histories of technology . . . do not contain asingle reference, for example, to such a significant cultural artifact as thebaby bottle. Here is a simple implement which has transformed afundamental human experience for vast numbers of infants and mothers,and been one of the more controversial exports of Western technology tounderdeveloped countries - yet it finds no place in our histories u technology.

onclusion

Immediately after this introduction come the four extracts - from Winner,Hughes, Cowan and Cockburn- that we have chosen as illustrative of someat least of the general themes discussed here. Then we have devoted eachof the subsequent three parts to one particular topic: the social shaping

. of the technology of production in Part Two, of domestic technology inPart Three, and of military technology in Part Four. Each of thesesubsequent parts has its own, shorter, introductory essay placing thereadings we have chosen in context.

The three areas of production technology, domestic technology andmilitary technology have not been chosen simply because each is importantin its own right. Around each has clustered a body of literature whichexplores with some coherence the topic of the social shaping of technology.In each instance it can be seen how a key social relation, or set of socialrelations, may have shaped technology. In the case of production technology,the relations in question are those between workers and employers, andwithin the workforce itself. The social shaping has generally occurred bothdirectly- as when the maintenance or creation of a desired social relationentered into the choice of technologies - and indirectly - as when prevailingsocial relations affected the framework of costs within which economiccalculations were performed. In each case we have attempted to show, as

23



Introductory essay

far as the available literature has allowed us, effects of social relations ontechnology that range from fostering or inhibiting particular technologies,through influencing the choice between two competing paths of technicaldevelopment, to affecting the precise design characteristics of particularprocesses or artifacts.

What we would like the reader to take away from this book is a senseof the extent to which society shapes technology, and some understandingof the myriad ways in which it happens. The particular areas of technologydiscussed here are not the only important ones. We have been influencedin our choice of structure and in our selection primarily by the availabilityof good, existing work that bears directly on our overall theme. We havenot chosen readings simply on the basis o he substantive importance o he technologiesthey deal with Had that been the criterion, then we would have includedwork in such areas as the technology of biological reproduction and childrearing, nuclear and other forms of power-generating technology, andbiotechnology. We might even have chosen a different structure - perhapsone oriented around concepts that cross-cut our categories, such as energytechnology or information technology .

Nor are our readings representative in time and space. Essentially, wedeal with technology in the capitalist West, though with brief extracts on

technology in feudalism and on Soviet technology. Pre-capitalis t times, theThird World s newly industrialising countries, China and the Soviet blocall these are under-represented.

As Staudenmaier (1980, especially 452-66) reveals, some of these biasesare characteristic of much of the history and social studies of technology.As such, they require collective, rather than purely individual, effort tocorrect them. But to indicate how other reading might be drawn upon toprovide a more complete pic ture- for example in planning a course onTechnology and Society- we have ended this reader with a section on OtherAreas of Study (pp. 295-307) in which we review some of the availableliterature.

Notes

With considerations like this in mind, recent Marxist writing about technology has tendedto use the broader term labour process , defined by Marx (1976, 284) as follows: Thesimple elements of the labour process are (1) purposeful activity, that is work itself,(2) the object on which that work is performed, and (3) the instruments of that work.

2 For useful discussions of the various meanings of technology , see Mitcham (1979) andSalomon (1984). In French or German, one will normally write la technique or die Technikwhere English has technology . Salomo n writes (1984, 113): On the Continent, inFrench, German or the Slavic languages, la technologic seems redundant beside la techniquewhich covers all activities associated with things technical; technologic is much morespecialised and refers to more advanced stages of echnique. English has no real equivalent

24

Introductory essay

of echnique and uses technology to cover what on the Continent would be both techniqueand technologic. Some attempts have been made to introduce such a distinction intoEnglish. Lewis Mumford (for example, Mumford 1964) writes technics , rather thantechnology , and Elster (1983, 94 seeks to distinguish between technique and technology,by which I have in mind all known techniques . But none of these attempts have so

far succeeded in systematically affecting English usage.3 A post-industrial society is one in which the dominant activity is not the production

of goods but the production of services, and in which knowledge, rather than capitalor labour, is the key resource. The view that societies are evolving in this direction iscontroversial. Badham (1984) is a useful review of the extensive literature on the topic.

4 Tom Hughes has pointed out to us the interesting fact that in the 1950 essay Gunfireat Sea (Morison 1966, 17-44) Morison s sympathies are clearly with the innovator who

is being thwarted, but in the 1963 essay Men and Machinery (ibid., 98-122) he ismuch more sympathetic to those who resist technical innovation.

5 See Barnes and Edge (1982, Part Three), Staudenmaier (1980, Chapter 5), and theinteresting studies by Aitken of the origins of radio (1976) and by Cardwell of the

development of the science of heat (1971).6 For two interesting and wide-ranging discussions of this, see Schon (1963) and Edge

(1974-75).7 After the original draft of this introductory essay was completed, we came across the

interesting article by Gutting (1984) which makes a very similar point. The collection

from which this article comes (Laudan 1984) is worth examining as a whole, as muchof it is relevant to the issues raised here.

8 Another writer for whom the idea of system was_central was Bertrand Gille. See Gille(1978).

9 See, for example, Salter (1960), Nelson and Winter (1974), Nelson, Winter and Schuette(1976), Nelson and Winter (1982). Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter are the best knownopponents of the neo-classical approach here. The neo-classical model has also been usedby economic historians to explain choice of technology: see Sandberg (1969), the reviewof the literature in U selding ( 197 7), and the critique of Sandberg by Lazonick (1981).

10 See the work of Nelson and Winter cited in the previous note.11 See, for example, Gansler (1982); for an interesting and detailed discussion. of the

legitimatory role of cost estimates even in an efficient project, see Sapolsky (1972,160-91).

12 t is worth rethinking the example of the stirrup and feudalism with this in mind. Evenif White is right in the overall features of his account, any determinism comes not fromthe technology as such but from military competition. For it was surely militarycompetition that, in White s picture, propagated armed shock combat and the feudalsystem, as those societies that adopted them triumphed over those that did not.

25



he ocial Shapingof Technology

How the refrigerator got its hum

Edited by

DON LD M C K E N Z I EDepartment o Soc£ology University o dinburgh

and

j U D Y JCM NSchool o Sociology Univers£ty o New South Wales

Open University Press

Milton Keynes · Philadelphia



Open University Press12 Cofferidge CloseStony StratfordMilton Keynes MKll 1BY, Englandand242 Cherry StreetPhiladelphia, PA 19106, USA

First Published 1985

This selection and editorial matter copyright © 1985Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form,by mimeograph or by any other means without permission in writing fromthe publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataThe social shaping of technology.

1 Technology- Social aspectsI MacKenzie Donald A. II. Wajcman Judy306 .46 T14.5

ISBN 0 335 15027 6ISBN 0 335 15026 8 Pbk

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataThe social shaping of technology

Bibliography: p.Includes index.1 Technology- Social aspects- Addresses, essays,

lectures. I MacKenzie Donald A. II. Wajcman Judy.T14.5.S 6383 1985 306 .46 84-22691

ISBN 0-335-15027-6ISBN 0-335-15026-8 (pbk.)

Text design by Clarke WilliamsPhotoypeset by Dobbie Typesetting Service, Plymouth DevonPrinted in Great Britain by M. A. Thomson Litho Limited,East Kilbride, Scotland.

Notes on ontributors

cknowledgementsEditors note

Contents

Part One Introductory essay and general issues

Introductory essay: The social shaping of technology

Langdon WinnerDo artifacts have politics? J

2 Thomas P. HughesEdison and electric light

3 Ruth Schwartz Cowan

Gender and technological change4 Cynthia Cockburn

Caught in the wheels: the high cost of beinga female cog in the male machinery of engineering

Part Two The technology of production

Introduction

5 Marc BlochThe watermill and feudal authority

6 Karl Marx

The machine versus the worker7 Harry Braverman

vVl

V111

1

2

6

39

53

55

67

68

75

79

Technology and capitalist control 81

8 Tine BrulandIndustrial conflict as a source of technical innovation:the development of the automatic spinning mule 84

9 William LazonickThe self-acting mule and social relations in the workplace 93

10 David F. NobleSocial choice in machine design: the case of automaticallycontrolled machine tools 109

social shaping of technology - introductory essay

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