the aura of “high tech” in a world of messy practice

THE AURA OF “HIGH TECH” IN A WORLD OF MESSY PRACTICE

Kathryn Henderson Texas A&M University

This study employs interlocking analytical devices from the perspectives of several disciplines to explore members’ meanings through definitions of “high technology” given by workers in design engineering. The comparative analysis employs concepts from art history, sociology of culture, anthropology and science studies to explore the appeal of “high technology” in comparison with the aura of original artworks and the status accrued by symbolic tools. Additionally, the role standardization has played in the development of engineering as a profession is explored in historical context as are the recurring themes of speed and “the new.” The findings reveal that how engineers use new technologies in the world of messy practice and their conceptual framework regarding so-called “high technology” do not map well onto one another. The study illustrates the perspective of science and technology studies that views all technology as socially shaped and society shaping, its construction accomplished through messy patched-up practices rather than clean, linear paths or perfect techniques.

You can take a “high-tech” process, build a piece of crap. It’s not “high tech” because you use the process.

The statement above was made by an aerospace engineer who designs very sophisticated control systems for jet aircraft, during interviews I conducted regarding the impact of computer graphics implementation on engineering design work. This particular engineer did all his design work with pencil and paper. When subsequently asked for his definition of “high technology,” he made an explicit distinction, defining the term as referring to a product, not a process. He further explained that the systems he designs are “high-tech” products because he designs them using “high tech” components. He maintained that the type of process used to design the control systems, whether pencil and paper or an extensive computer graphics system, is irrelevant in designating the product as “high-tech” or not. This definition served to keep the product of his own work within the “high technology” designation. In his words:

. . . The hardware we’re using is the most currently available devices made by the high- tech companies-Motorola, Texas Instruments, National, all those folks. . . . We don’t make the integrated circuits. . . . We take those chips and combine them together as a functional element. . . .

Direct all correspondence to Kathryn Henderson, Sociology Department (MS 435 l), Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-435 1.

The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 39, Number 4, pages 645-672. Copyright 0 1998 by The Midwest Sociological Society. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94720. ISSN: 0038-0253.

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People might associate computer graphics with high technology, where there’s no guar- antee that they’re associated. One, you’re talking about what exists and one’s a process. And you can certainly use different processes to accomplish the same end. . . . You can take a “high-tech” process, build a piece of crap. It’s not “high tech” because you use the process.

Why should this engineer take such great pains to classify the outcome of his work as “high tech”? There is more going on here than a technical designation. The engineer emphasizes product over process to create a definition of “high technology” that assures the outcome of his work and the products of the company that employs him will both qual- ify for the “high technology” designation. As he downplays process to maintain the “high tech” product definition of his work, he also ignores the work processes used to create the chips employed in his systems. He categorizes all processes in the black box of the “high technology” designation by listing the companies that produce the chips, assuming the lis- tener knows their “high-tech” reputation. The elicitation of such interesting issues enticed me to collect engineers’ and designers’ definitions of “high technology” throughout the remaining fieldwork (Henderson 199 la; 1995a; 1998).

This study employs interlocking analytical devices from the perspective of several disciplines to explore members’ meanings through the articulated definitions of “high technology” given by workers in design engineering. First, a comparative analysis uses concepts from art history, sociology of culture, and anthropology. The aura of “high technology” is compared with the aura of original art objects and the perpetual allure of glamour as used in sexist advertising. The concept of symbolic tools that, while also functional, lend status because of their social placements is explored in comparison with the social status of designated “high-tech” objects and processes. Second, a contextual analysis explores informants tendency to hold simultaneous but contrasting viewpoints that may be expressed in corporate and individual role distancing. I also explore the broader historical context of engineering as a profession, in which standardization, leading ultimately to automation, has played a role in the professionalization process. Finally, I examine the culmination of the recurring themes of speed and “the new” in historical context in order to suggest their significance in late twentieth-century capitalistic culture. Engineers are not Luddites-that is, it is in their interests to employ new technologies. However, the findings here reveal that how they use new technologies and their conceptual framework regarding so-called “high technology” do not map well onto one another. Indeed, many of the informants expressed the tension between the mundane practices of technical work and the mystique surrounding the outcomes of such work when designated as “high technology.” Such tensions echo the perspective of science and technology studies that views all technology as socially shaped and society shaping, its construction accomplished through messy patched-up practices rather than clean, linear paths or perfect techniques.

Language, culture, social relations, and technology are not mutually exclusive categories in the construction of technological artifacts. Perspectives from science and technology studies in the past two decades have been opening up the black boxes of received technologies and pointing out the heterogeneous nature of engineering (Callon 1986; Latour 1987; Law 1987). Historical and ethnographic researchers have documented that the development of new technologies requires the orchestration of innumerable elements, including but not limited to social and political influence, economics, human relationships, material objects, and explicit and tacit knowledge. “Local” or “tacit knowledge” (Polanyi

The Aura of “High Tech” in a World of Messy Practice 647

1958; 1967; Collins 1974; Harper 1987; Cambrosio and Keating 1988) sometimes called “fingertip” knowledge (Hindle 1981), is experiential in nature. It often cannot be articulated because it is taken for granted or exists in a nonverbal realm such as the visual or kinesthetic. Ethnographic studies of both the development of scientific theory and technology have revealed that the assumed linear path from ideas to design to development and production is mythology, illustrating, in contrast, the multiple attempts, messy practices, and tinkering on all levels that actually produce working innovations (e.g., Latour and Woolgar 1979; Knorr-Cetina 1981; Barnes and Edge 1982; Lynch 1985; Star 1985; Fujimura 1988; Traweek 1988; Mukerji 1989; Clarke 1990; Bowker 1994; Bucciarelli 1994; Bijker 1995; MacKenzie 1996). In such contexts technical workers socially construct technology that in turn constructs social relations (Winner 1980; MacKenzie and Wajcman 1985; Callon 1986; Latour 1987; Law 1987; Bijker, Hughs, and Pinch 1987). Together, technologists, technology, and social relations construct language to talk about technology while the language constructs the subject talked about (Garfinkel, Lynch, and Livingston 1981; Knorr-Cetina 1981; Gilbert and Mulkay 1984; Lynch, 1985).

Turning the focus to technology and technological artifacts as text, this study shares with audienceheception studies (Radway 1984; Griswold 1987; Liebes and Katz 1990) a focus on readers’ multiple interpretations of technology, textualized as “high tech” (high text) as well as their definitions of the term itself. At the same time, this study is also different. The readers consulted here are also writers of the text/tech in that they contribute to the design and construction of some sophisticated technological artifact. It would be one thing to study what the general public or even ordinary users of computerized technology imagine when they use or hear the term “high tech.” It is another to study the variety of definitions held by engineers working in firms so designated. It would seem, but is a mistaken assumption, that such engineers and designers ought to “really know” what “high tech” is and be able to differentiate what should or should not bear the label. While such individuals appear to be in a position to articulate those criteria that separate high tech from medium tech from low tech, they share only minimal agreement. Indeed, their definitions are stated more clearly in terms of whether their own firms engage in high tech or not, suggesting that issues of status are equally as important, and perhaps more so, than function.

METHODS

This study is based on in-depth, open-ended interviews with engineers, designers, drafters, and managers at a variety of companies using computer graphics systems in engineering design. I interviewed approximately thirty-five people from various firms and industries in addition to those individuals with whom I was in more constant contact during two case studies (Henderson 1991a; 1995a; 1998). The companies were located along the west coast of California from just north of the Mexican border to Silicon Valley. The choice of firms was based on where I could obtain access, since most businesses are adverse to visitors anywhere near new design work. In many cases I conducted interviews in lobbies, lunchrooms, outdoors, or at informants’ homes. Corporate security practices meant I often could not use a tape recorder. I obtained contacts through friends, colleagues, my university alumni association, and other informants. In one case, the link was through a group of chip design engineers in Silicon Valley who played softball together. Through the gra- ciousness of a computer graphics system consulting firm, I attended a workshop for graph-


ics systems managers where I met individuals who agreed to be interviewed and who introduced me to designers and drafters at their companies’ work sites. Because this article is based mostly on interview data, it has a different texture than materials gathered through participant observation. Since interviews concerned informants’ work and work processes and the changes brought about to them by the implementation of computer graphics, the conversational context supported application of the term to their own work. Hence their readings are colored (as is mine) by context.

Many of the definitions here exhibit self-interest or role distancing. At the same time, they are tied to practice. They come out of ethnographic research very concerned with practice. I interpret the informants’ definitions based in the context of theories from sociological and science studies. Informants were asked how they viewed their own work in comparison to their concept of high technology. Nevertheless, one’s own work, the familiar day-to-day practices, no matter how mystified as high technology by the outside corporate world, will never measure up to the perpetually renewing aura of “high tech,” exactly because in such work contexts the mystification is unraveled.

THE AURA OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), the root of the word “technology” is the combining form, techno, borrowed from the Greek where it meant “art” or “craft.” The English usage of “technology” to designate the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts is traced to 1615 and its use to designate the practical arts collectively to 1859. As a dichotomous pair, “high technology” and “low technology” presented in comparison, occurs much later; the earliest usage listed is 1964, significantly close to early computer use. Hence the history of the term, “technology,” links it to art as skill and to practical arts-not to the high art patronized by churches and royalty but to the low arts of crafts- men. Yet in current usage in the everyday and the industrial worlds, the addition of the word “high” suggests technologies so designated are not unlike other “high” designations in our society that historically and contemporarily rely on higMow dichotomies for their status. Examples include: “high culture,” “high art,” “high fashion,” “high church,” and “high class.” The implicit assumption is that the designated high artifact is higher in status than the unnamed low or middling “other.” The designation of high tech, like the designation high art, has definite status overtones that relate only marginally to functionality. For the past and present general public and particularly for the art community, an art work judged by taste makers to be worthy of museum display has served as a symbol of power and prestige for both its owner and creator. In contemporary cultural studies such higldlow or higldpopular dichotomies have fallen from favor (Crane 1992), and the relation between social status and taste is highly debated (Zolberg 1992). Researchers have documented that at least in the United States upper-class economic status does not necessarily correlate with a taste for high art (Gans 1985; Halle 1992; 1994; Lamont 1992). This article raises the possibility that “high tech” has taken over from “high art” the ability to sig- nify power and prestige, at least in the worlds of industrial and corporate culture. Perhaps the technocrat of the rationalized world, who Max Weber lamented had replaced the “cul- tivated man,” has dealt the final blow in elevating taste for and possession of high technology as the status replacement for taste for and possession of high art-at least in herhis bureaucratic domain. Hence new products and procedures designated as high technology contribute status to their corporate possessors and producers not because the new technol-

The Aura of ”High Tech” in a World of Messy Practice 649

ogy may get the job done more efficiently (it may or may not) but because it signifies power and prestige within the pertinent social networks.

An important element of such status for a new technology is its temporality, in that it is crucial to be the first (or at least one of the first) to possess a “high technology.” This paral- lels the status accrued by possession of original art objects. Walter Benjamin (1969) pointed out the “aura” of the original work that is absent in all reproductions because the uniqueness of the original lies in it being the original for reproductions. Mechanical reproductions (e.g., engravings, lithographs, photographs) came to enhance the value of original artworks through dissemination because they represented the work but were not the work. Similarly, new technologies become known beyond their original context but are of limited availability because of high cost or intentionally limited access. During this period, they develop a heightened “aura”--Benjamin’s “presence of the original” that he attributes to acknowledged artistic masterworks. Initially, the making of copies adds to the notoriety of the original new technology, while the time lag involved in dissemination also enhances the aura. The aura then gradually begins to fade as the new technology is demystified through dissemination of the copies and peoples’ mastery of them. Further widespread dissemination eventually kills the aura as workers work out, around, and through its bugs or inadequacies and incorporate the new technology into daily work patterns where it becomes mundane. Hence a high technology is elite today and obsolete tomorrow, rapidly losing its status to a newer or higher technology. For engineers, a technology possesses the aura of the original only when it is brand new and the problems incurred in its actual application to daily production are not yet solved. The actual activity of working out the problems of applying the new technology to daily work is what diminishes a technology’s aura because such activity leads to increased understanding and diminished mystification. By the time those using the technology resolve the problems or develop ways to work around them, the product is no longer the so-called “latest and greatest” of corporate computer jargon but merely part of daily routine. Nevertheless, the aura’s glamour initially over- shadows the ponderous task of solving the problems in the workings of the artifact itself or making a fit with preexisting work practices. So too, its glow blinds those enamored of it to the day-to-day work that goes into designing and producing the so-called high technology itself. The design work that produced the technology is mystified in that it is seen as the product of geniuses or at least of special people with access to obscure knowledge. I will come back to the subjects of mystification and secret knowledge in the discussion of informants’ definitional categories.

SYMBOLIC TOOLS

The aura of a high technology designation delegates a certain kind of status to a tool or technique and hence renders products and processes as symbolic tools. Such symbolic tools can be recognized more for the status they confer on their users, owners, and makers than for their actual function in getting work done. Anthropologists have recognized symbolic tools in non-Western cultures for some time. Symbolic tools bestow power and status on their possessors not because of their functional capability but because of their status as special objects from special sources and special places within the fabric of the social network, including its hierarchy, lineage, and history. For example, Carl E. Thune (1983) reports that for the Duau people, palelesalu (an oversized, greenstone ax blade) are among the most common valuables used in exchange ceremonies and are often family heirlooms.


Maria Lepowsky (1983) reports that perhaps the most essential ceremonial valuables on Sudest are greenstone ax blades called tobotobo, even though thousands of them are in cir- culation. Before the nineteenth century, they were used as tools and weapons but function today as ceremonial objects. According to Lepowsky, Sudest people say that five bwam (small ax blades) equal one very long ax blade, just as European money has different denominations. Particular blades called roguigu are treasured as magical aids said to be able both to “call” other valuables to join them and literally to give birth to valuable larger blades. While these New Guinea tribe members may still use tools such as ceremonial ax blades in a functional manner as well as trade them, the power and prestige the ax blades bestow within the culture comes not from their functional capability but from their position in the social world.

An example of the symbolic use of the high tech designation can be drawn from contemporary engineering practice. During a design meeting I attended engineers and technicians discussed the choice of a vendor to mold a newly designed surgical instrument. The ability to do high-tech work was used as one of the quality criteria for the firms even though that capacity was directly mentioned as not applicable to the job. One engineer stated specifically in the early deliberations: “What’s nice about this is we’re not using any new technology, we’re just putting things together.” As the discussions proceeded the choices were narrowed to three companies. As the team discussed the virtues of one vendor against another, the same engineer who made the above statement introduced the criterion that company A had the ability to do high tech jobs while companies €3 and C did not. The design team eventually chose company A despite its higher cost. Though the ability to do high tech production was not the only criterion used, the fact that it was included when it was not functionally needed illustrates the symbolic capacity of the high tech designation. Those responsible for making the decision acknowledged they did not need the newest materials, processes, or concepts (i.e., high technology capabilities) for the functional production of their product, yet the ability of the top-rated company to accomplish such became symbolic of that company’s technical quality. Similarly, the aircraft control-panel designer quoted earlier justified the high tech status of the chips he used by referencing the high tech reputations of the companies who produced them. But how do other engineers and their supervisors define high technology?

INFORMANTS’ DEFINITIONS OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY

Shared Characteristics

Most engineering informants’ definitions agreed that computers or computer components such as integrated circuit chips would be used in some way or another in anything designated as high technology. Contrasts emerged as informants couched their definitions generally in terms that fell in three categories: (1) process, ( 2 ) product, and/or (3) concept, though boundaries between the three were muddy, since an informant would often include more than one category within a definition. Though several engineering/management informants incorporated concepts of product and/or process in tlieir definitions of high technology, none insisted on such a precise distinction between them as did the aircraft control designer quoted earlier. Perhaps more revealing was another characteristic perme- ating almost all of the definitions: the glamour and mystification associated with high technology. Informants almost always included a list of comparative and superlative adjec-

The Aura of ”High Tech” in a World of Messy Practice 65 1

tives such as “newer,” “better,” “faster,” “smaller,” “more reliable,” “more efficient,” “eas- ier to use,” and “higher” or “highest quality” in their definitions. The constant use of such superlatives in informants’ definitions illustrates a perception of infinite refinement over the present state of any given technology regardless of its current sophistication. This infinite thrust into the future invokes the mystique of the unknown. Indeed, the linking threads between the various definitions of high technology were constant references to the mystique of unattainable, unknown, or hidden knowledge as illustrated in this civil engineer’s dual definition:

I’ve got two definitions of high technology, my own personal and my own public one. My own public one is high technology is any technology you don’t have. . . . Believe me this [computer graphics in drafting] is very much high technology in our organization, even though plants that we design and build are high technology compared to other firms or other, urn, or even other engineering disciplines. . . . My personal feeling is that high technology is things are new, and complex. . . . High technology is anything I don’t understand right now. It’s, ah-once I understand it then to me it becomes routine, and so not, not in that world that’s out there that I don’t understand anymore. So if I apply that definition to our treatment processes it would be things that are unique, that we don’t do everyday, that have some risks, that have some complexity that we typi- cally don’t do.

The civil engineer’s definition of high technology as “any technology you don’t have” and as “anything I don’t understand right now,” coupled with his statement, “once I understand it then to me it becomes routine . . . not in that world . . . that I don’t understand anymore,” illustrates the concept of high technology as a promise of something unknown, secret, mystified-to be delivered in the future-as opposed to the familiar, the routine, the mundane. Hence, high technology can be understood like John Berger’s (1972, 130) description of publicity images in that they “belong to the moment in the sense that they must be continually renewed and made up to date.” Berger maintains that publicity makes the single proposal “to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives by buying something more” (1972, 131). According to Berger, the future promises this transformation through the example of those who have been transformed and who, as a result, are enviable. The state of being envied constitutes glamour. Like advertising images, the concept of high technology never speaks of the present but always of the future. This is the glamour of high technology and the source of its aura. Sexist advertising practices illustrate this at the extreme, promising future sexual fulfillment: Buy this car, this shampoo, this deodorant and he/she will fall at your feet. Indeed, glamorous new high technologies are often spoken of as “sexy.” The aura of high tech is the same kind of promise as sexist advertising: “Buy this latest greatest product and you will become a leader in industry.” The promise is based on a constant look to the future for fulfillment, power, leadership, all sexy promises for tomorrow. And tomorrow will bring only more daily mundane tasks along with more promises.

Given that fulfillment of the promise can never be achieved, informants also tended to give definitions that could accomplish something in the present. Whatever definition they employed, it portrayed their work and the output of the company that employed them in the best light possible in terms of status accrued by designation as a high-tech firm. At the end of each of his definitions, the civil engineer quoted above adds a justification for the high- tech quality of his firm’s work. In the first statement he does this by contrast: “Plants that we design and build are high technology compared to other firms or other. . . . engineering


disciplines.” While he states that high technology is anything that he as an individual does not understand because it is new and complex, he grants a higher level of understanding to the firm in that its new treatment process for sewage is unique, complex, risky, something “we don’t do everyday.” The last statement is significant since it is daily practice that kills the aura of high tech. Yet both of his definitions ignore the space between the promise and its delivery. While many managers have become leery of the hype of computer salesman- ship because all too often they have had to purchase more hardware and software in order to make a product work, the high technology designation still retains the mystique of the promise of tomorrow, clouding the hard work it will take to get there in the todays to come.

Process Definitions of High Technology

The category I call “process definitions” is one in which the main criterion for definition as high technology is how the work is done as opposed to the characteristics of the final product. Those who defined high technology in terms of process often included concepts of automation. Managers and supervisors of computer graphics systems more often uti- lized a process definition illustrating faith in the promise of automation than did design engineers or drafters, though this was not exclusively the case.

For example, the chief engineer of the computer applications group at a company that builds industrial complexes ranging from nuclear power plants to cookie factories described high technology in terms of the complexities of integrated automation processes-a description which put his company ahead of others despite acknowledged problems. Though he acknowledged that work at his company was less automated than at other firms he discounted this by reference to the more complex nature of his firm’s projects. He based his view of automation and its future on the incorporation of various automated processes into one large, integrated system which would encompass all the aspects of designing a complex industrial installation:

See, I have high expectations, so I don’t consider computers around the office high tech, um, I don’t consider “walk through” high tech. Um, I think data sharing is at a very, very sophisticated level where all the people are smart enough to know how to use the system that can do that-that would be high tech to me. . . . I’ve been around so much of this stuff by now that I don’t think anything that we have is high tech. I think it’s all pretty simple stuff. Integration’s probably “high tech” is my answer. . .

CAD [computer-assisted design] evolved around mechanical [work]-it started as a mechanical thing. And the reason it did is because it’s easy to do a widget this big, and all the emphasis has been put into mechanical. And in the business we’re in, this big broad business, we lag way behind these people because the problem is so complex and it’sgonna take so much work to get it done. . . . The system I can see in my mind today will not be in place when I die. I mean I’m convinced of that ‘cause I’ve seen ten years go by and boy have we. . . . we have creeped [sic] along. You wouldn’t believe how ancient, how slow this process has been.

The chief engineer’s expression of “high expectations” for tomorrow simultaneously illustrates the dying spiral of yesterday’s high technology that continually loses its status to become “all pretty simple stuff.” Yet this same graphics manager complained long and loudly during the interview and at a previous computer graphics workshop of the daily


problems constantly being worked out in the complex system he oversees. For instance, various customers and vendors wanted their graphics done on different systems and in different formats, resulting in compatibility and scheduling problems for his department. Everybody else’s problems are small compared to his. He even acknowledged the great amount of daily work it takes to make graphic systems and integration work in his statement: “The problem is so complex and it’s gonna take so much work to get it done.” Despite this acknowledgment, the aura, the mystique, the promise of futuristic computer technology prevails, no matter what the problems of application today. He concluded: “The system I can see in my mind today will not be in place when I die.” The implication is that it will be, some tomorrow.

Similarly, the graphics systems supervisor at a medical instruments company answered my query for her definition of high technology in terms of automated process:

What is my definition of high technology? I would say complete automation. . . . I look at it as strictly ah, using a lot of equipment in gaining high technology. And I mean that with computers, laboratory testing equipment, I just mean full automation, anything that you can plug in and get readings from and complete analyses from in producing a product. Asked if she would call the company she worked for a ‘high tech’ company she replied: I’d say we’re probably 30 percent of the way there. We’re working at-it’s definitely a goal-is to automate over here- manufacturing, how we assemble the part, robotics, how we, um, package it in its final package, all the way to boxing. So we are working towards automation, more automation. And this is just the beginning of it, in my environment.

The latter statement again encompasses an orientation toward a distant future goal to be achieved by the promise of high technology as automation, though yet to be delivered. In this company only drafters used computer graphics in the design process; engineers did the conceptual work in hand-drawn sketches. Yet the promise of automation looms large and is being worked toward: “This is just the beginning.” Again, the problems of daily practices are obscured by the promise of future utopia.

An engineer who designs integrated circuits for a company that produces equipment for naval radar applications defined high technology first as “the most advanced, the latest devel- opments in whatever field, mechanics, physics, chemistry, biotechnology.” He then added a comment on his own field: “Most of the high technology now would be in the chip area, very high speed, very dense design using new types of processing for fabricating”-in other words, what he does. Emphasizing the importance of process, he then added, “I don’t think of basket weaving, but maybe if robots were being used.” At first glance this appears to be merely a reference to the newest, latest knowledge in terms of process; even the ethnocentric low-status stereotype, “basketweaving” may be high technology if it is being done by robots. However, the robots would have to have circuit designs, as do the computers designed by the company for which this designer works, suggesting this is a more directly self-serving definition with some bragging that “we can design anything, even basketweaving robots.”

Concept Definitions and Mystification

Those who saw high technology in terms of a new concept or idea described it in terms of human innovation-original ideas and new applications of old ones. For instance, a sys-

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tems designer in a branch of electronic communications that creates products to protect satellite signals described high technology as something done faster or better than competitors, based on an innovative concept. Later, she’ also introduced the issue of secret knowledge, alluding to what she called her “secret project” in language that enhanced its mystification. Asked for her definition of high technology she responded:

High tech to me is, especially in communications, something that you do particularly fast or better or cleverer than another competitor or something. I don’t think of it-I mean we do use very high tech, quote unquote, “latest, greatest” type of microproces- sors and things to do that. . . . I think of high tech as using some really new. . . . things to do it. . . . But I don’t think of it in terms of anything mechanical or production wise or anything like that. I think of it totally in terms of design concept. . . . I think high tech is if you use a very advanced architecture or something-isn’t that strange, that’s what we do.

She goes on to define what she means by an advanced architecture:

Your terminal design has an architecture by the way it operates. A high-tech architecture would be what we’re kind of known for throughout the community or the industry-it’s something called a parallel processing, kind of a slice approach. That’s kind of what I think of high tech. That’s strange. It’s kind of a, probably, communications standpoint. . . . And then using these latest, greatest chips or ICs as they come out.

As shown by her statement, this systems designers definition of high technology puts concept foremost, forgoing “anything mechanical or production wise” in lieu of “totally in terms of design concept.” At the same time, she also ties together process and project components, acknowledging that conceptual originality allows one to create “something that you do particularly fast or better,” but that the ability to do so is tied to products in the use of the “latest, greatest chips or IC’s” (integrated circuits). Unlike several other informants, she appears to recognize insightfully that her definition of high technology is the definition of what she does, perhaps realizing the self-serving nature of her statement that high technology is “us[ing] a very advanced architecture,” since she adds, “Isn’t that strange, that’s what we do.”

References to the mystification of high technology occur throughout this communications systems designer’s speech in statements such as, “That’s strange,” “isn’t that strange,” and “That’s really weird.” The latter prefaces her comments about the “secret thing” that she designs:

I kinda tire of tracking the IC state, I’m kinda more into the systems high-tech stuff [laughter]. That’s really weird, and actually. . . . the secret thing I do is the protection of this data. While there’s more latest, greatest of those too, that’s kinda, too, high tech, but it’s something that most people have never heard of, they’re really nasty little devices [laughter] so people go “big deal” [laughter]. Well, if you worked in it, you’d love it, you know.

Her project is “secret” because of military and commercial security practices. Such limited access to knowledge maintains monopoly while adding another dimension to the mystique of high technology; not only is it mystified simply because it is “anything I don’t under-


stand right now” in the civil engineer’s words, that is, advanced knowledge that requires training and experience, but here it is knowledge that is intentionally kept secret. Whether the design concept of the product is simple or complex is immaterial; its mystification is maintained because the basic components of its design are intentionally obscured through limited access-that is controlled by the politically or economically powerful.

A further reference to high tech and secrecy was given by a lens designer in high-pre- cision medical optics. He stated that he did not see his present work as high technology, describing the lenses he designs for implantation in the eyes of cataract patients as “medium tech,” while others in the company do the “high tech work.” He stated, “We have some really, you know, products- it’s really high tech, but I’m not working on it, my boss and somebody else are working on it.” He sees the company’s newest foldable lenses in new materials as high technology, something that, “if it works, revolutionizes the industry.” (The researcher has agreed not to name these materials as a condition of access-further reference to the secrecy of the competitive capitalist environment.) This designer was proud of an earlier product he helped design, citing it as high technology in its era:

Yeah, we definitely have some things that go in really high tech. I call it high tech. Like a few years ago, the one I. . . . showed to you. . . . For example, to make it opaque, you know, it is our secret. . . . You need [the] same materials, same technology. I didn’t use any chemical, anything. I make. . . . this thing opaque. . . . Some of our competitors, I understand, they just dropped out of projects because of the cost; you know it costs a lot to make it.

Thus, not only is high tech something that “revolutionizes” the industry because of new concepts introduced into the “same materials” and “same technology” but this knowledge is highly restricted and secret, that also helps to keep it expensive. This secrecy that protects corporate ownership of ideas in a capitalistic environment also contributes to the mystique surrounding them when employed as high technology.

The phenomenon of perceiving others as engaged in high technology work in contrast to one’s own work appears again in the definition of an engineer who runs his own company that designs computer hardware. He describes high technology in terms of concept that affects process. However, he chooses his example, not from his work, but from astronomy, his hobby, that is even further removed from the mundanity of daily routines:

The work that is being done in many fields where you’re changing the fundamental ways in that things are done. Go to astronomy for instance. Up on this mountain where the telescope is 200-inch diameter. It was just a real technological feat to make it at all. That technology is just as obsolete today as the big vacuum columns and seven-inch- long motors in tape drives. So now then with computers they can use hundreds of small mirrors and change them dynamically and make a far better telescope than one big piece of glass. That change in concept is what I call high technology as opposed to applied technology.

Moreover, he openly recognized and stated the correlation of such distance with the concept of high technology, prefacing the above definition with a reference to its mystique in association with the work of “others.”


[High technology is] not what I do. If I were to pick high technology-of course, you pick some esoteric thing no one knows anything about-I would pick genetics, eh, as an example of high technology.

Like this independent engineer and the lens designer, several informants credited individuals or groups other than themselves as engaged in authentic high tech endeavors. Such denial in some cases is simply a statement of the individual’s perception and verification that all work, no matter how perceived as glamorous, is still made up of the minutiae of mundane, messy practices. At the same time, in certain contexts, such statements can also be explored in more depth using Erving Goffman’s concept of role distancing.

Role Distancing

The nonchalance about daily work and denial that one’s work is of high-tech status in firms acknowledged in their social worlds as having a reputation for producing high-tech products is more studied than it perhaps appears. Such behavior can be understood, employing Goffman’s concept of role distancing-behavior intended to show off expertise by intentional and studied carelessness toward the performance of the activity. Asked whether he considered his work in the realm of high technology, an integrated circuit design engineer who works for a company that designs protection devices for television signals replied:

Ultimately what we’re doing overall as a company here is [high tech]. . . . Did you know that we received an Emmy in 1986? . . . for technology in television. It was very, very innovative, high-powered stuff. It was not anything anybody had done. I mean, there were some other people trying to compete, but [we] beat everybody out. So there’s high tech in that sense, overall, yes. . . .

What I’m doing is high tech in the sense that, for instance, like I think the technology that will go into this chip is, at least, very recent technology. I don’t know that we’re going to use the most, you know, the smallest dimension-they talk, keep going, make them smaller and smaller dimensions in the traces and transistors and stuff. . . . So, I guess [what I do is] fairly high tech, and yet -and yet the details are oftentimes just slogging it out, you know-beating your head against the wall and finally coming up with a solution and-and in some way that seems fairly mundane. Being in the middle of it and working at it, it’s not that much different than other jobs.

This informant explicitly refers to the nonglamour of daily process: it is “beating your head against the wall and finally coming up with a solution” that “seems fairly mundane.” Yet he imputes that it must be high tech after all, since “we received an Emmy in 1986. . . . not anything anybody had done.” Nevertheless, he suggests that for him the glamour is missing, this is just work. He adds:

You normally think of high tech as gee whiz, exciting and it’s not like that. . . . I sup- pose this is [high tech], I say it just doesn’t feel like, you know, this fascination with high tech and the people have that it is some um, I don’t know-I don’t even know how to describe it.

This engineer states that he finds something.missing, the “gee whiz, exciting” experience, what others call “sexy” jobs that create “sexy” technology. For him, the work is like any

The Aura of ”High Tech” in a World of Messy Practice 65 7

other job. The implication is that high-tech work should be “fascinating,” but here it is again mystified to the point of being indescribable. Such denial, the emphasis just on plain hard work, is a characteristic of his role distancing action. Just as Goffman’s merry-go- round rider exhibits behaviors to illustrate his expertise in the role by his noninvolvement in it, this engineer characterizes his work as “fairly mundane,” . . . . “not that much different than other jobs.”

An engineer working for a small science lab engaged in experimental research and development for NASA also gave definitions that could be interpreted as role distancing. While he sees some airplanes as high-tech products, he describes his own research and development work for NASA he describes as “low tech” that he defines in terms of process, stating: “I work in a low-tech way. My sketches go to somebody else that operates a CAD [computer-assisted design] system and they take it the next step.” He adds another dimension to the low-tech character of what others might see as very glamorous high-tech work since it is part of a research and development project that will be tested on shuttle flights. He states of his designs:

The ones I’m working on now are intuitively obvious so I would call them pretty low tech. We’re not building these airplanes and we’re not building shuttles. . . . The computational capability that we have now-high technology-is something that spooks me a little bit. It’s when the results- when you get results that you can’t foresee [laugh] I don’t know-it’s a difficult thing to express. I spend my weekends shoeing horses, for example. I live in other worlds.

His statement that the high computational capacity of computers “spook him” in their revelation of concepts that are not “intuitively” apparent, again, is an allusion to mystification, intensified by juxtaposing it to the earthiness of shoeing horses. His self-effacing role distancing takes the format that high technology is done by others than himself and is spooky. It is telling that such role-distancing statements were made by those who worked in firms that had high-technology reputations, often through mystification based in secret knowledge, high security, and/or government contracts in space program research and development.

These informants’ contrasts of mundane practice to the glamour of “high tech” could be interpreted as contemplative insights rather than the same intention as Goffmans merry- go-round rider who displays his role disenchantment. However, that they match quite well the institution of jeans-instead-of-suits-and-ties dress codes, practiced in the labs of Sili- con Valley and other electronic engineering and computer-oriented-innovation work sites, suggests otherwise. Such dress and its sanction at corporate levels indicates, “We are the rebels, the innovators; we are too busy doing creative work to be bothered by appear- ances.” In this, such workers and their corporate culture emulate the grunge fashion of graduate students underneath the white coats of science. But there is a difference. While the jeans may be worn with holes and faded T-shirts in university labs, they become clean, sometimes pressed, or transformed into chinos and corduroys and worn with tidy sports and polo shirts in industry.* The point here is that the “Aw, gee, this is just what I do everyday” attitude about the messy practice that goes into the development of so-called high tech products serves as both genuine response, yes, casual clothes are usually more comfortable than dress ones and to the role distancing that contributes to further mystification surrounding the product. This is because individually the dress of one person can be

658 THE SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Vol. 39iNo. 4/1998

merely comfortable and the day-to-day practices mundane, while collectively the message is that the work is so special that traditional rules of dress and conduct do not apply-the group is beyond reproach, that is they are “creative geniuses whose everyday practices are tomorrows future.” The phenomenon is not unlike that perpetrated by Americans traveling internationally a few years ago, before todays widespread globalization. Travelers from the United States, unthinking, or thinking they were exhibiting egalitarianism by wearing jeans and casual clothes, actually offended their hosts who expected that visitors, sufficiently wealthy to engage in world travel should dress the part. The message many foreign hosts read was that such visitors thought themselves of such high status that no rules applied to them, including showing respect to hosts by dressing up. The message of the high-tech casual dress code and the role-distancing attitude technical workers in such industries display toward their work is only possible because they do not need to defend their reputation for producing glamorous, cutting-edge technology, the companies already have the reputation. Indeed, part of the culture of the high tech world is the absence of formal dress codes and the attitudes that accompany them.

In companies acknowledged to have high-tech status throughout industry, evidence of such culture can be further seen at the corporate level, not only in the “jeans and T-shirt” dress code set by Apple and adopted throughout newer electronics and computer industries, but also in the design of work space. The “jeans aesthetic” is further elaborated at Apple in the interior decor of their research and development offices, where primary colors are used to make the work environment seem playful. Conference rooms sport two or more whole walls of whiteboard rather than the requisite blackboard-sized drawing space that unremarkable corporate conference rooms provide. Together the jeans aesthetic dress code and preschool decor state “We’re so smart, we need space to just play and invent something important,” illustrating that role distancing can be corporate as well as individual. While design engineers often no longer need to wear coats and ties (unless perhaps when meeting with clients) such status,that accompanies the aura of high tech, was not always the case. Engineers, like other professions, have had to battle for their professional status.

HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS IN THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF ENGINEERING

By paying attention to history, we can contextualize the current aura of high technology within engineering in terms of the historic development of engineering rather than see it as simply the issues of interacting with new technology. Hence, a brief recapitulation of the role of standardization in engineering history before the dawn of the computer age is appropriate (for a more extensive historical treatment, see Henderson 1998).

In ancient civilizations, as well as our own, people have differentiated between knowledge domains, such as sacred versus profane, theoretical versus practical, elite versus popular or mass, and higher versus lower knowledge. In the West, higher knowledge tended toward the theoretical and abstract, systematized and reasoned to justify the facts and activities believed to constitute the world. Such formalization of knowledge marks particular knowledge as distinct and continues to help maintain its separation from both common knowledge and nonformal specialized knowledge, while simultaneously maintaining exclusivity of access. As Pierre Bourdieu (1984) has noted, the struggle over classification is part of class struggle.


Standardizing, codifying, and ordering-ways of rationalizing knowledge into an ordered set, are part of the professionalization process. The very act of such codification allows the codifiers to claim a market monopoly over a knowledge base. By codification I mean the setting down of a body of knowledge into an ordered format using or developing some sort of consistent strategy and standardized symbol system. The act of coding is tied to exclusivity of access. Actors involved systematize and standardize knowledge. These actors are not without interests of their own. The act of codification is crucial because un- codified knowledge receives no recognition to generate and facilitate economic monopoly rights for holders and users of a knowledge base because of its intangibility. Nevertheless, such tacit knowledge is the locus of practice and the deep-seated source where knowledge is grounded (Lave 1988). This core of knowledge is mystified because it is uncoded, un- taught, and achieved through experience only after the credentials that bestow access to the profession are earned. It is the insiders knowledge that lends prestige. The codified knowledge is developed into a case for credentialing that surrounds and protects experiential knowledge from the claims of outsiders. Hence the codification of knowledge marks it as a claimable domain for a market monopoly while simultaneously also creating a trans- ferable body of knowledge that can be taught. The mastery of this domain can then be used as criterion for the awarding of credentials to practice in the field (Larson 1977, Freidson 1986).

As a specific type of rationalization employing the construction of a symbol set particular to a realm of knowledge, classification through codification gives power to the actors who accomplish the codification. Not surprisingly, the era when the codification of engineering knowledge was taking place was the period in which the meaning of technology changed. It was the time during which U.S. engineering schools first began to make a claim on machine shop knowledge.

History of Standardizing as Contributing Factor

It was the nineteenth-century technical school educators’ codification of knowledge from the machine shop floor into formal knowledge that claimed the market monopoly on engineering knowledge for their graduates. Both new-school-graduate engineers and shop- trained engineers were interested in the problem of systematizing and standardizing materials, measuring methods, tools, and parts. While both the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers; established to foster and promote the interests of mechanical engineers) and technical journals expressed interest in rationalizing the nomenclature of the machine and shop, such rationalization was mainly the result of a generation of textbooks and handbooks (Calvert 1967). The late nineteenth century witnessed battles over who should set engineering standards and how they should be decided, along with whether the metric system should become the U S . standard. The early twentieth century saw Taylor- ism introduced in the attempt to standardize work practice itself from an engineering perspective, before it became co-opted and reified by management. Yet, the mistaken premise of Taylor’s scientific management, that was to establish “one best way” to get a job done, is still alive. Not only does such a perspective ignore individual variation, it also neglects the messy nature of work and the constant patching up of misunderstanding in communica- tion. The belief that computer graphics can provide the “one best means” of getting work done echoes the same mistaken assumption. In this case, a linear model of design work is used for work that is nonlinear in practice. Nevertheless, standardization has played a


major role in the establishment of engineering as a legitimate profession, though that role has been an inconsistent one. It has not served a single universal good but has been fraught with contention over whose interest it best serves in a given time, place, and practice. Indeed, not just the standards themselves but also who has control over setting them is a major variable in who reaps their benefit or who can claim the knowledge so codified. Todays engineers fill in gaps in the technology of computer graphics by employing mixed- use practices, incorporating elements from both the paper and electronic worlds (e.g., Henderson, 1991a; 1995b; 1998; Allwood and Kalen 1994; Cuomo and Sharit 1989; Liker, Fleishcher, Nagamachi, and Zonnevylle 1992, among others).3 Here too, though, the technology is more often credited than the resourceful people that make it work despite its shortcomings. Hence, the standardization and, ultimately, computer automation, designated as high tech, are on a continuum of a historical trend toward standardization of knowledge, parts, processes, and people that have contributed to engineering as a profession.

Issue of Proprietary Knowledge

Just as in the arts (Becker 1982), in science and engineering, despite new breakthroughs credited to various individuals, innovation is actually the outcome of knowledge and materials accumulated from numerous sources and compiled by a network of social and economic factors. For engineering in particular, the rise of the school-culture engineer at the turn of the century, as opposed to the elite, machine-shop-trained engineer-entrepreneur of independent or at least well-connected means, changed the status of engineering. It brought engineers with only their knowledge to sell into the market and ultimately the corporate engineer who signs away the rights to his ideas when he or she enters the firm. While some scholars (Braverman 1974, Shaiken 1985) have maintained that technical workers were becoming part of a new working class, subject to deskilling, cross-national and other research challenges this view, documenting variety in engineers’ status, roles, class and concerns, dependent on context (Henderson 1991b; Whalley 1986; 1987; Zuss- man 1984; 1985; Meiksins &Watson 1989; Watson and Meiksins 1991).

At issue here is the role of the computer as codifier-an intermediary that has the potential to pull status away from the members of the profession to the technology the profession has designed. However, much of this status can be retained through other means. One interesting factor is the propensity of engineers to retain the mystification and black boxing of technologies with which they are not directly involved. Despite research that opens black boxes by revealing the mundane practices and conglomeration of heterogeneous elements that construct any technology (Callon 1986; Latour 1987; Law 1987) engineers themselves can and do help maintain the mystification of new technologies. The “high’ of high tech is not unlike the elite knowledge of the professions. After all, any given piece of high technology is not something every engineer understands. If it is outside his or her specialty area it is mystified. On the other hand, if a given engineer is actually working on a new project or one steeped in secrecy for reasons of corporate monopoly or supposed national security, the daily routine still seems like mundane daily work. The mystification and hence the high technology designation stem from the intentional lack of access constructed to protect property rights. Given the historical professionalizing prece- dent of keeping a market monopoly over certain domains of knowledge and the interests of corporations in keeping trade secrets, such attitudes are not surprising. However, interests alone cannot completely accomplish such goals but depend on culture to assist


them, that is why the aura of high tech and its glamorous nature, mirroring the planned obsolescence of popular culture icons such as fashion, fads, and entertainment, is equally relevant. Culture, in this regard, does not stand alone as a determinant. The cultural practices of engineering design that revolve around paper-world techniques for rendering a view of the world particular to engineering design, along with economics and politics also play a role (Henderson 1995b).

SYMBOL AND FUNCTION

The argument presented here is not simply a symbolic versus functional role for high technology. To draw theory from art history and anthropology is not to argue in the realm of the symbolic alone. Historically, art forms and objects have served functional as well as symbolic ends. For instance, the decoration of Gothic cathedrals, while full of symbolism, served the very functional purpose of conveying the narratives of Christianity (also full of symbolism) in a period of high illiteracy. Implements of various sorts (e.g., a Eucharist chalice, a tea service, soup tureen, samovar, or harpsichord) can be merely functional or can convey the status of the organization or individuals using them by their artistic articu- lation and/or construction from precious materials. Hence the function-producing and status- producing capabilities of a given object or technology are not mutually exclusive, though social perception could weigh them against one another in particular contexts. What I am arguing here is that the status ascribed to so-called high-tech tools is as much, perhaps more, about their aura and mystification than about their function. Of course they have to work; they are not merely a symbolic facade. But what it takes to make technology work, the repetitive trials, tinkerings and adjustments-the messy practices-all this is obscured, contributing to the “black box” effect just as the contributions of the paint maker, canvas weaver, and numerous anonymous assistants were forgotten under the reputation of the artistic genius of a master. Even engineers who engage in just such work, such as those quoted here, tend to forget that the high tech components they use are constructed using mundane practices not terribly different from their own.

The question that initiated this study was: Why would the control-panel design engineer (quoted initially) care if his work is seen as high tech or not? This question is echoed by the findings in informants’ definitions: Why do most of the collected definitions of high technology, whether based in process, product, concept, or a combination of these, turn out to be either self-serving definitions of what the informants do or mystifications of what they or others do? One answer to the first question is that people care if their work and their firm are designated as high tech for the same reason someone would buy a Michael Graves teakettle instead of a Revere Ware one. Either would boil water, and perhaps the Revere Ware one more efficiently, but the Michael Graves kettle is more interesting to look at and carries status: art in the kitchen. A telling example is Gary Downey’s (1992a, 1992b) finding that the plans and anticipation for high tech CAD/CAM (computer-assisted desigdcomputer-assisted manufacture) to rescue U.S. manufacturing from encroaching Japanese competition has not been realized because the technology does not perform as anticipated. Nevertheless, the status of CAD/CAM appears to be intact for the time being; it is still seen as the promise of the future in many sectors. Similarly, the previously mentioned medical instrument design team chose a company known for its high tech work even though the “latest and greatest” technology was not needed for their project. In these cases, people are relying on accrued status in a social network that has socially constructed


such status in a recognizable symbolic mode. That mode takes form through bearing the label “high technology.”

It is not my intention here to totally disassociate symbol from function but rather to point to their relative weight shown by the concentration of labor put into making a new technology function as promised. Whether status and function can be distinguished from one another is far from clear. The two overlap. In the case of the molding firm chosen for its high tech status, the contracts it earns contribute to its opportunity to do work that, in turn, contributes to its reputation and status as a high tech firm and hence serves to gain more contracts to do more work and so on. Yet at the same time, when new technologies such as CAD/CAM do not perform as expected, people who believe in their efficacy due to their high tech status continue to put in laborious hours in order to work out the programs’ bugs on the belief that their status makes it worth the endeavor and that they will eventually function. When or if the programs do eventually function, it will be because people put in the effort to make them do so. Then, almost as soon as the new technology is functioning smoothly, new options are introduced, and the cycle is repeated. This is an issue of speed: not only the speed of the new machine, but how fast the bugs of the new technology can be resolved in order to get it up and running smoothly before the next innovation requires such intense problem solving all over again. I will come back to the important issue of speed in both functional and aesthetic terms in the conclusion. Speed is not only about function.

Engineers, Computer Graphics, and Mixed Practices

Obviously, engineers do not oppose new technologies. It is in their interests, on multiple levels, both to contribute to and use new technologies. This is not merely because of the need or the glamour of new machinery; historically, a trend toward rationalizing, codifing, and standardizing materials, techniques, and the knowledge of practitioners has well served engineering’s professionalizing process. Nevertheless, when it comes to imple- menting the high technology-computer graphics, that bring a rationalized, standardized and codified system into the daily practice of engineering design-engineers and designers have responded with less than a universal embrace. As I and others have documented (Henderson 1991a; 1995a; 1995b; 1998; Manske & Wolf 1988; Saltzman 1988; Cuomo and Sharit 1989; Liker et al. 1992; Allwood and Kalen 1994), design engineers use the technology, though not universally and not necessarily as graphics-systems designers planned. Rather, engineers and designers engage in mixed practices that allow them to retain paper-world practices for some aspects of design work. Paper appears to be more useful for such things as quick sketches for capturing fleeting ideas and working out problems and for collaborative conversation-sketching to integrate ideas. At the same site where such paper-world practice is retained, graphics systems may be employed for record-keeping, repetitive tasks and detail work, and hard-copy print-outs used for further collaboration and feedback (Henderson, 1991a; 1995a; 1998). Indeed, a CAD department manager stated, “My designers use more paper than ever, now that they have computer graphics. They print out a new draft for every design meeting” (Henderson 1991a). Such mixed-use strategies protect the messy practices of design work, carried over from the paper world that developed in tandem with the conventions of engineering drafting and design, while still taking advantage of the conveniences electronic graphics systems offer. Hence, when engineers use a process regarded by some as high tech they can support fel-


low technologists who developed the systems and accrue some of the glamour associated with them. At the same, time they also act to preserve the space and techniques they are accustomed to using to get the job done. The degree of electronic-world versus paper- world practices employed varies, of course, among individuals as well as among companies and industries, rendering such mixed-use practices even more diverse.

CONCLUSION: THE ALLURE OF SPEED, THE NEW, AND THE AURA OF BLACK BOXES

So what are the implications of the symbol and aura of high technology in our late capitalistic, global, industrial society? This account of informants’ definitions and the historical and cultural context in which they occur has spun several intertwined threads telling us about technology, society, and their generative embrace of one another. I will now attempt to assemble them with a couple strands of thought from postmodernism into a coherent whole. The result will not be an elegant construction but a reminder of the heterogeneous elements contributing to a lumpy, asymmetrical whole. One thread that several informants mentioned was speed. Another was newness, as in one informant’s usage: “the latest, greatest, fastest”-a set of adjectives that strangely is seen in computer culture as suffi- cient to stand alone, modifying nothing.4

Speed

In a critique of Western industrialized society’s love affair with speed, Italian architect and social critic, Paul Virilio (interviewed Sylvere Lotringer, 1983) point to the perhaps pre- scient but definitely flamboyant and intentionally irrational, Futurist avant-garde art movement in Italy at the dawn of the twentieth century and its member’s embrace of speed as the aesthetic expression for a new age. Excerpts from F. T. Marinetti’s, “Foundation and Man- ifesto of Futurism” (1908) capture the character of the ecstatic movement with the description of a midnight speeding-automobile ride:

And we sped on, squashing the watchdogs on their doorsteps who curled up under our scorching tires like starched collars under a flat-iron. Death, domesticated, overtook me at every turn to graciously offer me her paw. . . . We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched with a new form of beauty, the beauty of speed. A race-automobile adorned with great pipes like serpents with explosive breath . . . a race-automobile that seems to rush over exploding powder is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace . . . .5

Technology is the producer of speed and speed is the essence of war, according to Vir- ilio. Indeed, the speed-obsessed members of the Futurist art movement all marched off to revel in the technological speed of the World War I war machine and were killed, every one, by it. Virilio turns to even earlier historical precedents to strengthen his point:

And finally, there’s the free man and the slave who only have the possibilities of hiring themselves out or being enlisted as energy in the war-machine-the rowers. In this system (which also existed in Rome with the calvary), he who has the speed has the power. And he has the power because he is able to acquire the means, money. The Roman horse-


men were the bankers of Roman society. The one who goes the fastest possesses the ability to collect taxes, the ability to conquer, and through that to inherit the right of exploiting society (Virilio & Lotringer, 1983, p. 44).

Virilio sees speed as violence, pointing out that with the development of each new technology we have produced a new catastrophic accident: railway catastrophe, shipwreck, plane crash, car collision (we can add catastrophic accidents due to computer error). Soci- ety does not connect such catastrophes to increased speed as one of its social costs, rather they are seen as merely accidental outcomes. This is because, according to Virilio, this negative side of technology and speed has been censored (1983, pp. 31-2). In the same vein, Virilio emphasizes the contribution of speed to the creation of cinema, that he maintains produces a fragmented view of the world, easily exploited for distortion.

That the desirability of increased speed is taken for granted by the informants in this study raises it almost to the level of ideology, in the sense that it is never questioned and it legitimates the status quo. Virilio’s critique raises the questions that those who follow the order, “make it smaller, faster,” never ask: Whose interest does this increased speed serve? While the production of faster, smaller integrated computer chips continues to bring the cost of newer and newer computers down, all of us (in the classes who can afford to use them) keep buying newer equipment to “keep up” with the innovations. This is the perfect consumer cycle-here masked in the name of increased function that presumes the obsolescence of any earlier technology that may very well be getting the job done quite ade- quately, if a few seconds slower. But how many of us in academia, who disdain to keep clothing “fashionable” or to engage in other forms of fashionable conspicuous consumption, would be ashamed to have our colleagues know we used an “antique” computer? At the same time, the lag time in the clearance of our personal checks has disappeared, to the interest of the banks; stores will not accept even small personal checks without checking a database for clearance or sometimes even telephoning the bank if the computers are down. Computer speed has changed the culture toward more and more surveillance and control in the interests of those who already have economic power. In Virilio’s terms, those who go fastest. . . . inherit the right of exploiting society while those who design the faster and faster technology forget they are part of that society to be exploited.

The New

Jean-Francois Lyotard too acknowledges speed but in a different sense. Conceiving “the world of postmodern knowledge as governed by a game of perfect information, in the sense that the data is in principle accessible to any expert,” he maintains that “there is no scientific secret” but rather that “imagination. . . . allows one either to make a new move” (from arranging the data in a new way) or to “change the rules of the game” (Lyotard 1984, pp. 5 1-52). He sees speed as one of the properties of such imagination and the justification of scientific work as simply to produce more work, to generate new and fresh ideas, and/or again and again to “make it new.” While he seems to privilege scientific work in this regard and to see technology as merely another slave to capitalism, if we apply the same logic to high technology, the implication is that it is the “newness” that makes it so desirable. This is similar to Berger’s (1972) analysis of glamour, the constant-but-never- fulfilled promise of something more in the future, the new, the tomorrow. I read Lyotard as granting to science the potential of recombining data in a creative manner analogous to

The Aura of ”High Tech‘‘ in a World of Messy Practice 665

that postmodern architects have employed in recombining diverse aesthetic elements to create new architecture and using technology, also forever being renewed and recombined, both to finance the endeavor and as a tool in its accomplishment. The specter in the back- ground is the question of power and control over the data resources. Lyotard reminds us that speed is a power component in such systems.

The informants here, not unlike just-plain-folk consumers, accept unquestioningly that new, like faster, is better. A useful tool in understanding such uncritical acceptance is Fred- ric Jameson’s (1981) concept of the “political unconscious.’’ Jameson maintains that the great master narratives have passed underground to have an unconscious effect as a way of “thinking about” and acting in our current situation. It is quite evident that old narratives of scientific and technological progress-better and faster technology draws on science and itself for the betterment of humankind and for the profits of those smart enough to invest themselves and their wealth in such endeavors- are alive and well in the statements that uncritically define high technology in terms of speed, efficiency, and secrecy. Simi- larly, Thomas Kuhn (1962) showed that textbooks deliver such a “received view” of science. What is even more interesting is the tension between informant’s awareness of the messy practices it takes to get their own particular job done and their beliefs about the faultless design and efficacy of “high technologies” that they have not helped to develop. Such demarcation practices between one’s own work and that of others in adjoining fields, as Gilbert and Mulkay (1984) point out, are common in scientific laboratories where practitioners, seeking consensus in the field, resolve contradictions and come to resolutions by considering the work and conclusions of others in their field and by marking boundaries among those they interpret as holding different views. Again, Lyotard would remind us that speed is a power component in the system.

While Western society has not always been as obsessed with speed and the new as it is today, the components of this fascination lie in Western cultural history: concepts of linear time, status competition, and the competitive nature of capitalism. European recorded history shows us that elites have traditionally displayed status and attempted to keep others from encroaching on it by eroding their symbols. Sumptuary laws in early modern Europe prohibited nonroyals from wearing certain colors, fabrics, and furs to maintain distinction. Partially to keep ahead of the emerging merchant class, mid-fifteenth-century Burgundy elites made wearing black the only acceptable fashion, but attired themselves in fashions of the “finest Netherlandish fabrics” cut “wastefully on the cross [grain],” hence maintaining conspicuous consumption status boundaries (Baxandall 1972). While issues of status display can certainly be found in all cultures, in the West, capitalism, of course, sped up the whole process, over time, mass-producing the elite “high fashion” of one season for the common consumers of the next, and forcing the fashion-conscious to replace constantly their wardrobes, furnishings, vehicles, and ultimately all the items of modem commodity fetishism. Similarly, in the art world, the rise of an avant-garde and the characteristic attack on existing aesthetic movements by emerging art movements is associated with the rise of privately owned galleries and a commercial rather than patronage system.

Even as the global economy is rapidly marketing commodity fetishism to other cultures, the pursuit of speed and the new can be traced as the culmination of the competitive nature of Western capitalism and industrialization along with a cultural sense of linear and finite time. While space permits only the briefest sketch here, it is worth noting that the periodic festivities of preindustrial Europe marked a cyclical sense of time based in agri- cultural seasons. This changed as the festivals became Christianized (Burke 1978). Look-


ing cross-culturally, we can see that for traditional societies that believe in reincarnation rather than end-of-time, judgment day tends to be less concerned with speed since the things that are important to them, life and growing seasons, will always come again in another cycle. Hence the capitalist outlook captured in adages such as “time is money” and the political outlook captured in Machiavelli’s advise to the wise prince to “act in time” combine with lived calendars and practice in the cultural realm. It is not insignificant that the Italian Futurists articulated their manifesto at the dawn of the twentieth century. They were looking for new modes of representation for a new industrial age. As our calendars mark the turn of the next millennium, those past Futurist’s focus on speed appears tellingly insightful, given its culmination, witnessed in our computer cultures. But people are also capable of applying breaks to speeding machines. Attention to the details of daily work can reveal the circumstances in which technical workers warrant the use of such breaks.

Mixed Practices and Mixed Consciousness

One example of such a set of circumstances occurred because of a machinist’s strike during the prototyping phase of a newly designed turbine engine package that I was observ- ing. I had accompanied the white-collar designers of the project to the shop floor to witness the rather unusual circumstance of designers using their drawings to assemble their own design. Having this scenario witnessed by an outsider forced one designer to confront the conflict between the received view of technological practice and the messiness of daily work. Uncomfortable with the fact that I was witnessing the tinkering, adjust- ment, redesign, and patch-up necessary to make the machine work, he sheepishly expressed his embarrassment to me. Goffman would call this a breach between the front and back stages, in which the backstage was exposed to an outsider.

The issue for a designer, though, is that he or she holds both views-belief in the aura of high technology and awareness of the messiness of daily work-simultaneously, even though they are incompatible. This is why the issue of whether the chip designer who admitted to the mundanity of his work was engaging in role distancing or honesty is also contentious; both intentions are held simultaneously, or perhaps sequentially, at different times in different contexts.

Another useful example of such mixings can be drawn from a recent announcement by the US Postal Service of the upcoming release of digital stamps and the caveat attached to it. In addition to extolling the virtues of the new postal application of high technology to digital stamps (which will include such information as the zip codes of sender and receiver along with the postage and mailing date) the spokesperson made another point. In contrast to the perceived impersonal character of a bureaucratic national-level government service, the spokesperson announced that the U.S. Postal Service recognized that some mailings are expressions of “personal craftsmanship” and that traditional, glue-backed stamps such as the “Love” stamp (recent versions depict either angels or a pair of enamored swans) would continue to remain available. Hence, contrary to Weber’s bureaucrati- zation of charisma, even a much-bureaucratized, impersonal institution appears to have acknowledged the need for mixed practices to meet mixed needs-could this be the charisma of a bureaucracy? More probably, it is informed awareness of the importance of public relations.

Similar, in some ways, are the mixed practices of engineers and designers who strategically choose whether paper or electronic tools are best for a given phase of their work,


while keeping up the appearance that computer tools are the major contributors to serve their and the profession’s interests. Yet that they can, themselves, strategically make such choices serves as what Virilio (1983) has termed breaks (as in a break applied to a speeding car), an anecdote to speed and time to stop and consider the conflict of simultaneously held positions. That such a breaking action is rooted in the mundane activities of doing work is significant because knowledge rooted in everyday activities of work is, according to some, the most powerful form of knowledge in the world (Suchman 1987; Lave 1988).

Hence, part of the appeal of high technology is the speed to outdistance competitors and/or enemies in a capitalist environment, while constantly updating with newer and newer software that continuously rearranges knowledge. But sometimes faster and newer are not better,that is why engineers retain paper-world practices, sometimes for critical analysis, sometimes to get a better view of the whole, sometimes for other reasons (Hen- derson, 1998). Just as practices can be mixed, so can views of the status of one’s work and attitudes toward it.

The Perpetual Aura of Black Boxes

The aura of the high tech categorization serves to glamorize new or updated technology, generating a sense of awe not unlike that articulated by the New York Times in heralding the “lightning lines” of the telegraph as the “divine boon” and “wondrous event of a wondrous age” (Czitrom 1982). The high tech glamorous aura is often perpetuated through the use of computer graphics for design presentations. While impressive graphics may be used for sales promotions and illustrations in customer-oriented literature, actual conceptual design work is often done with pencil and paper and the more painstaking detail work allotted to computer graphics operators.

Generally speaking, the longer a technology is in place, the more its users forget about the messy work and uncertainty that went into it: it becomes a mystified “black box.” Interestingly, in the case of design engineers and the phenomenon of high technology the inverse appears to be the case. For the engineers quoted here, the passage of time and the working out of bugs in a new technology decreases the glamour and mystification of its high tech status. Granted, as the tool becomes taken for granted, it will again be mystified as a black box by users. By then, however, the engineers will be grappling with making a new high technology function. Working out the bugs in a new technology decreases its mystification and glamour along with its black-box and high-technology status for the engineers. Yet it does not diminish the status of other, newer, technology as long as it is unfamiliar. Hence proximity and familiarity decrease high-tech status of a technology for engineers while they increase black-box status for general users.

The issue is that because of the aura and glamour of high technology we often forget the human agency that went into the design work and the human agency that will be required to fit the new technology into work settings and practices. Drawing from my case studies, it is evident that engineers obviously want to use computer graphics, and their managers want them to use computer graphics. Contemporarily and historically, engineers are not and have not been resistant to new technologies or to the standardization of their practices that machine use entails. Indeed, the professionalization of engineering has been built on the standardization of parts, processes, and people, and the cultural value of contemporary engineering has been linked to its claims to being high tech. Obviously, engineers do not dislike the codified knowledge that has served them and the profession as a


whole so well. That is why, I would argue, they seek out mixed practices of new and old techniques and technologies and are also ready to fill in the gaps to make high tech machines work despite monumental problems.

Just as engineers use mixed practices to protect the cognitive spaces where visual creativ- ity takes place they also protect engineering by keeping it technically up to date. To continue to use pencil and paper in a world of CAD could be seen as analogous to espousing your love of country-and-westem music during intermission at the opera. But just as we live in a multi-cultural world, where art openings may indeed play rock-a-billy music, to actually live in a high-tech world and get the work done means to practice in a multi-tech world-to play on all levels. The symbolic importance of high tech tools makes it easy to overlook experiential knowledge. There will always be a need for low technology in engineering design because it is tied to tacit knowledge. Designers using CAD systems over time may develop new forms of nonverbal knowledge through interaction with their new tool, though those may be very different from and serve different purposes than ones now being used (Henderson 1995b, 1998). We must wait and see. Meanwhile those engaged in design cannot throw away the local knowledge tied to older practices and crucial to their work.

Placing ultimate value on the new as speed or through speed is indeed linked to the development of industrial capitalism in the context of Western cultural values. Such values in the contemporary as well as historical eras promptones set people to strive for constantly elusive ideals: sainthood through industrious labor, civic virtue, truth, and style (space does not permit a thorough development of these issues here.) Being careful not to be overdeterministic, one might contemplate such an ideal today as capitalism extended beyond spending practices and into our consciousness of “the good,” “the beautiful,” “the true,” and “the fastest.” (One is reminded of Superman: “. . . faster than a speeding bullet . . . truth, justice, and the American Way.”) But we must still pay attention to what people are really doing.

Here we find technical workers saying one thing, the echoes of the received myth of “scientific progress” in their definitions of “high technology,” and doing something else, tinkering and using mixed practices. Indeed, some of the most creative work being done in engineering is not in the exclusive use of new computers and software but accomplished by those who use them creatively, mixing older paper world practices where appropriate with computer technologies for repetitive and other appropriate tasks. We need to recognize the creative resilience of design workers-engineers, designers, drafters, and their management-in their innovative mixed-use practices that fill in the gaps in the world of electronic designing and drafting. To do so challenges the glamour and the aura of the new technology. Awareness of the messy daily practices of sketching, drawing, and turning back to paper copies to redline them in contrast to crediting the dark screen with the sparkling colored lines on it with accomplishing the task is to eluci- date the mystified and reveal the plain hard and messy work of getting the job done and getting it done “on time.”

AC K N 0 W 1 E DC M E N TS

I want to thank all the engineers, designers, technicians, managers who gave generously of their time to this research. Some of the material presented here also appears in Henderson 1998.


N O T E S

1. The pronouns used here are accurate to the gender of the speaker. Though only one woman is quoted here, 1 found, as did Kantor (1979) in looking at “token” women in corporate environments, that women engineers tended to have opinions that varied little from those of their male colleagues regarding technical matters. They are, after all, as Wajcman (1991) points out, products of the same masculinist culture. Indeed, in their efforts to be “one of the guys” women engineers may actually be more conservative in their opinions than their more secure male colleagues. Given the under- representation of women in engineering and the fact that I did not actively seek out women engineers (that was not the focus of my study), I do not have a sufficiently large sampling to say anything definitive.

2. Indeed, “casual Friday” in much of corporate America has now become “business casual” as the everyday dress code, except in front offices and sales, where dress is used to convey a different message.

3. See Allwood and Kalen ( I 994) for a review of the international literature on the short-comings of CAD usability in design work.

4. Or perhaps the technology is so taken-for-granted it is understood as the modified even though unspoken, perhaps another form of role distancing, or like Bernstein’s (1971) restricted code, a shorthand conveying group membership, or all of the above.

5. Quoted from reprint in Chipp (1968). Chipp’s footnote (p. 284) states: “Originally published in Le Figaro (Paris) (20 February 1909). First English translation, made under Marienetti’s direction, from Poesia (April-June 1909). Reprinted in the catalogue for the exhibition at Sackville, London, March 1912. First part, ‘Foundation,’ translated by Joshua C. Taylor.”

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