History

“Does Technology Drive History?”: A Brief Review

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 5 Comments

You may have gathered from some of my posts over the last couple of weeks, including the last one,  that I’ve been reading Does Technology Drive History?: The Dilemma of Technological Determinism edited by Leo Marx and Merritt Roe Smith. Previous posts have drawn on one or two chapters in particular. Here is a review of the whole for those who may be interested. Incidentally, the whole is quite complex and dense, so this does not do it justice. After the review, I’ll add just a few more thoughts that have occurred to me since writing the review. I’ve also edited out the paragraph on Marx’s essay since I discussed it at length in the previous post.

Having worked through the essays collected in this volume, one may be tempted to conclude that the title question finally dissolves into a debate about semantics and taxonomies. The dilemma is real enough, and palpably so. That technological determinism, as more than one author noted, is such a hard notion to dispel, that it is repeatedly resuscitated, that it can exert such a powerful influence upon the popular imagination — all of this suggests that “technological determinism” attempts, however unsatisfactorily, to name a phenomenon that is still in search of adequate description and explanation. The essays collected by Smith and Marx (a historically suggestive pair of surnames) in Does Technology Drive History? are an effort to name this elusive phenomenon.

The first two essays, by Merritt Roe Smith and Michael L. Smith respectively, provide a cultural frame for the succeeding discussion. They each draw on visual resources, particularly the lithography of Currier and Ives, to illustrate the deep and abiding faith in technologically abetted progress that animated American history. The iconography of railroads, steamships, and telegraph lines infused popular scenes depicting the advance of technology and civilization across the American continent, simultaneously dispersing darkness and displacing dissidents. These essays also point to the first of many distinctions that the reader must bear in mind as they attempt to hold the rich complexity of the debate in mind. The distinction in this case is between the fact and the idea of technological determinism. The status of the former is, of course, the question under debate. The latter, however, is a matter of belief independent of the ontological status of the object of belief, and it is apparent that belief in technological determinism functioned as an article of faith in nineteenth century America expressed most commonly under the banner of Progress.

This important distinction between the (debatable) reality of technological determinism and technological determinism as an idea that is widely accepted recurs in the later essays by Rosalind Williams and Leo Marx. Williams also links the notion of technological determinism to a faith in progress, but she finds her link outside of the American context in the work of two French Enlightenment writers, Turgot and Condorcet. Like their nineteenth century American heirs, Turgot and Condorcet believed civilization would advance in step with technological and scientific progress. Whether or not this was objectively true, it was subjectively believed, and more importantly, acted upon. “Ultimately,” Williams concludes, “not machines but people create technological determinism.” And following Mumford and Havel, Williams would have us ask whose interests are served by the proliferation of the idea of technological determinism.

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The semantic angle is pressed most forcefully by Bruce Bimber who identifies three accounts of technological determinism: normative, nomological, and unintended consequence. In good analytic philosophical style he then precisely defines “technological” and “determinism” in such a way that all but nomological determinism fail to meet the definitional standard. The nomological account, of which Heilbroner’s classic essay reprinted in this volume is representative, posits a law-like relationship between technological causes and social effects. Using the debate over technological determinism in the thought of Karl Marx as a case study, Bimber concludes that a theory of history that would meet the criteria of nomological determinism would be implausible. Thus, he urges that we clear the debate over the social consequences of technology of the obfuscating language of determinism.

In the remaining essays dealing with the question of “technological determinism’s” status as historical reality, we find more parsing, defining, and categorizing. The usual pattern is to define two extremes and then offer a third mediating position. The essays by Thomas Hughes and Thomas Misa each present a variation of this approach. Hughes seeks to stake out a position between technological determinism on the one hand and social constructivism on the other. He finds both accounts ultimately inadequate even though each manages to grasp a part of the whole situation. As a mediating position, Hughes offers the concept of “technological momentum.” By it Hughes seeks to identify the inertia that complex technological systems develop over time. Hughes’ approach is essentially temporal. He finds that the social constructivist approach best explains the behavior of young systems and the technological determinist approach best explains the behavior of mature systems. “Technological momentum” offers a more flexible model that is responsive to the evolution of systems over time.

If Hughes’ approach is essentially temporal, Misa’s account is in some sense spatial. He positions his approach between “micro-level” and “macro-level” approaches to technological systems. The claims made by macro-level analysis, technological determinism’s natural habitat, cannot be sustained at the micro-level. But large trends and the social consequences of technological change remain invisible at the micro-level. Misa recommends “meso-level” analysis focused on institutions of mediating scale situated “between the firm and the market or between the individual and the state.” At this level Misa believes scholars are most likely to integrate the social shaping of technology with the technological shaping of society.

Philip Scranton is likewise sensitive to matters of scale when he proposes that “totalizing determinisms” be replaced by “local determinations.” In his view, the resolution to the dilemma lies in particularizing the object of analysis. Scranton’s essay is a reflection on matters of historiography. He finds that master-narratives of progress and technological determinism have clouded the vision of historians of technology to the contingent and particular. His sensibilities are essentially postmodern and they include the rejection of grand narratives, the embrace of a “plurality of rationalities,” and a focus on matters of power differentials. He urges an approach which shares a certain affinity with Clifford Geertz’ “thick descriptions,” some of which might uncover local instances of technological determinism, but many more which will not.

Perhaps the most pertinent consideration that arises from the essays described above, as well as those that were not mentioned, is that the question of technological determinism is enormously complex. Because of this it might seem pedantic to note areas that were left unexamined, but it is curious that very little mention was made of what Walter Ong has labeled “technologies of the word.” These technologies — writing, printing, and later electronic means of communication — influence human beings at the most fundamental level, that of thought and expression. Whether they are finally endorsed or not, it seems negligible to omit mention of the work of Ong, his teacher Marshall McLuhan, or the German theorist Friedrich Kittler who, among others, have each in their own way drawn attention to the formative influence of communication technologies on individual consciousness and society.

Interaction with the work of practice theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michel de Certeau might have also added yet another rich layer of analysis by seeking to locate the nexus of technology and society in the embodied rituals of everyday life which structure the lived experience of individuals. A mere hint in this direction is offered, incidentally it would seem, by J. M. Staudenmaier in his closing essay when he alludes to the “catechetical extremes of the Disney imagineers” in constructing the EPCOT experience. In fact, technologically inflected catechetical instruction of habits and beliefs is on offer throughout society, not only at EPCOT. Examining these technological dimensions of lived experience would seem to be yet another potential source for theorizing the question of technological determinism.

Altogether, however, the essays collected by Marx and Smith offer an invaluable entry into the debate over technological determinism and, through this debate, into the larger question of technology’s role in society. A question that is increasingly becoming more, not less pressing.

A couple of additional comments:

a. Media theorists (or media ecologists), philosophers of technology, and historians of technology could benefit from more interaction. Specialization is the rule of the academy, of course, and the professional associations, but the question of technology involves such an interdisciplinary set of considerations that it necessitates a variegated, inter-disciplinary approach. As I mentioned in the review, it is unfortunate that hardly any reference at all was made to the consequences of communication technologies for thought and expression. But, the flip side is that the theorizing of media theorists and the philosophizing of philosophers of technology is sometimes untethered from concrete, historical analysis and all the worse for it.

b. Against the technological determinists, many of the writers in this volume stressed the social construction of technology (see my posts on David Nye). The actual history of the adoption of technologies reveals very complex circumstances in which factors other than the nature of the technology drive the technology’s deployment and evolution. The social factors are the result of human agents acting on, against, with, for the technology in question. Okay, fair enough. But it is tacitly assumed that the human agents are always fully aware and rationally self-possessed. What if many of the choices are not the result of deliberate rationalization, but stem instead from pre-rational, unconscious, or habituated dispositions. And what if some of these are the result of previous long-term engagement with certain technologies? This brings us back to the media theorists who are sensitive to the manner in which our media condition or thinking and acting. I tried my hand at approaching the question here: “Technology, Habit, and Being in the World.”

Leo Marx on the Sources of our Technological Pessimism

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 1 Comment

Are we living in an age of technological optimism or technological pessimism?

In “The Idea of ‘Technology’ and Postmodern Pessimism,” Leo Marx, a leading historian of technology and American culture, argues that while technological optimism had been the default mode of American culture throughout most of its history, technological pessimism asserted itself to an unprecedented degree in the second half of the twentieth century. His essay traces the roots of what he terms “postmodern pessimism” in the earlier, dominant technological optimism and the evolution of our terminology for what comes to be known as “technology.” This latter semantic history, not unlike that which undergirds his more recent “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept,” throws light on significant shifts in the nature of technology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These shifts fuel a new way of conceptualizing technology which in turn becomes a precondition for the emergence of technological pessimism.

Marx begins by reminding us of the “progressive world picture” which emerges out of the Enlightenment. For the cultures of modernity, “conceptions of history,” he explains, “serve a function like that served by myths of origin in traditional cultures: They provide the organizing frame, or binding meta-narrative, for the entire belief system.” And the “conception of history” animating Enlightenment society expected “steady, continuous, cumulative improvement in all conditions of life” driven by the advance of science and what was then called, among other phrasings, “the practical arts.” The West’s “dominant belief system,” in Marx’s words, “turned on the idea of technical innovation as a primary agent of progress.”

But then come the shifts Marx perceives in the concept of technology. The first development is artifactual, it relates to the actual technological artifacts. The introduction of mechanical, chemical, and electric power led to the development of “large-scale, complex, hierarchical, centralized systems,” examples of which include the railroads and electrical power systems. In other words, these new technologies are no longer discreet artifacts, more or less independent in their function; they are vast, technological systems.

The second important development is ideological. The earlier Enlightenment notion of progress viewed technology as a necessary, but not sufficient cause of progress which was understood as a movement toward “a more just, republican society.” This political vision was gradually replaced by a technocratic notion of progress which amounted merely to the continued improvement of technology.

Alongside these artifactual and ideological transformations, the terminology applied to the phenomena in question was also evolving. Older words or phrases for what we today would simply label technology included the “mechanical arts” or the “practical arts” — it was an older nomenclature better fitted to traditional, craft based technologies. But this terminology seemed inadequate to describe the reality of emerging complex technological systems. Marx points to Thomas Carlyle’s 1829 essay, “Signs of the Times,” as an instance of the search for a new vocabulary with which to name the shifting technological landscape. Carlyle suggested that his was an “Age of Machinery,” but by “machinery” he meant more than the material machines themselves. Included in the term was the “mechanical philosophy” associated with Descartes and Locke, the systematic division of labor, and the emergence of bureaucratic organization.

By the late nineteenth century the “abstract, sociologically and politically neutral … word ‘technology,’ with its tacit claim to being a distinctive, independent mode of thought and practice like ‘science,’ began to fill the semantic void. In Marx’s view, it would not be until the 1930’s that the term would achieve “truly wide currency.” By mid-century it was used more or less as we use it today, to denote a remarkably wide array of tools and techniques, singularly and in complex combination.

The term’s elasticity, according to Marx, fit the new reality “in which the boundary between the intricately interlinked artifactual and other components — conceptual, institutional, human — is blurred and often invisible.” Marx goes on to add, “by virtue of its abstractness and inclusiveness, and its capacity to evoke the inextricable interpenetration of (for example) the powers of the computer witht eh bureaucratic practices of large modern institutions, ‘technology’ (with no specifying adjective) invites endless reification.”

The consequence is a “common tendency” to “invest ‘technology’ with a host of metaphysical properties and potencies, thereby making it seem to be a determinate entity, a disembodied autonomous causal agent of social change.”

Recalling the second, ideological development, the semantic evolution just describe took place alongside of related evolution in the concept of “progress.” The development of technology had been previously understood to be a means to the end of constructing a “just, republican society.” By the late nineteenth century the advance of technology was synonymous with “progress”; it was the no longer a means, it was the end.

Marx again: “At this time … the simple republican formula for generating progress by directing improved technical means to societal ends was imperceptibly transformed into a quite different technocratic commitment to improving ‘technology’ as the basis and the measure of — as all but constituting — the progress of society.” For a discussion of the visual and artistic representation of this development in the nineteenth century see an earlier post, “The Art of Technology and Empire.” Marx cites the Italian Futurists, Mondrian, the Precisionists and Constructivists, Le Corbusier, and the International Style as later twentieth century symptoms of the shift in values.

Finally, returning to the topic of the essay, “postmodern pessimism,” Marx concludes that amidst the smoldering ruins of World War II the techno-utopianism dissolved. The disenchantment with technology, exhibited since the early nineteenth century by an “adversary culture” with roots in the Romantic critique of the Enlightenment, now gained traction with the wider culture. It was all the more plausible because of the way “technology” had been invested with autonomous, casual agency and the manner in which progress and technology had been elided. Ironically, the postmodern critique of modernist technological systems often came hand in hand with a valorization of new electronic and digital means of communication; this, in Marx’s view, merely replaces one technocracy with another.

The point Marx seeks to drive home at the end of his analysis is this: We have, by our terminology and our ideology obscured the social and political dimensions of the technological systems we’ve created and in so doing consequently obscured the role of human agency. He sardonically concludes his essay by observing that “it might be well to acknowledge how consoling it is to attribute our pessimism to the workings of so elusive an agent of change.”

Some thoughts to wrap up. First, the history Marx traces, both semantic and ideological, is important in its own right. Also, Marx makes an important point regarding the power of our categories to shape our thinking. If we feel a loss of agency in the face of modern technological systems, is it in part because of the adoption of the abstract language of “technology”? Perhaps. But, as Marx shows, the term filled a real semantic void, and these systems are real enough as is there inertia or momentum.

This essay also reminded me of my recent exchange with PJ Rey regarding his essay on trust in complex technologies. These complex systems may make us more aware of our embeddedness in social reality, but because of the sense of a loss of agency that they can engender I suspect it is a rather angst ridden sociality that we partake of. My sense is still that it is not quite “trust” we have in these systems, much less in the experts who designed them, so much as it is a cheery apathy or indifference born out of an inability to imagine an alternative to acquiescence. Those who resist may appear to be misanthropic cranks, but their resistance may have more to do with a distrust in the system (warranted or not), than some sort of misplace individualism.

Finally, Marx is right to press us to take responsibility for our decisions and their consequences. “Technology made me do it” will not get us any farther than Flip Wilson’s “the devil made me do it.”

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Update: Take a look at Doug Hill’s thoughtful comment on Marx’s view in the comments section of the  following post.

Weekend Reading, 11/26/11

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

Happy Thanksgiving weekend everyone. I hope the past few days have been filled with good food, laughter, celebration, family and friends, and, of course, much gratitude. And here’s hoping that you all managed to stay clear of any Black Friday pepper-spray instances of “competitive shopping.”

We’ll start this week with a piece on cyber-security (is that still an acceptable use of “cyber-“?).

“Palantir, the War on Terror’s Secret Weapon” by Aslee Vance and Brad Stone in Business Week: Yes, Tolkien fans, you read that correctly. The highly-prized security software that had its start as PayPal’s anti-fraud program is named after the seeing-stones in The Lord of the Rings, and Palantir’s CEO unabashedly explains that the company’s mission is to “protect the Shire.” It’s an interesting company that seeks to keep its soul in what might be a seedy business. We hope they succeed, because as a friend and Tolkien enthusiast noted, “While the original Palantir were made by elves for the forces of good, they were eventually turned to evil ends. That may serve as a good allegory for those of us who get worried about Big Brother having infinite information about our lives.”

From the rather serious to a lighter piece.

“The Amazing History and the Strange Invention of the Bendy Straw” by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic: The history of technology — and yes, the bendy straw is a technology — is full of interesting and quirky stories like this which shows how much went into designing and making objects we take entirely for granted. It’s a quick read and you’ll have a great an interesting anecdote with which to bore entertain people every time they pull out a bendy straw.

And now for a slightly whimsical take on a rather profound matter.

“The Umbrella Man” produced by Errol Morris at the NY Times: This is a great little documentary, it comes in at under seven minutes, based on the “umbrella man” that mysteriously stood on the route of JFK’s motorcade the decidedly sunny day he was shot in 1963. It finally makes a great point about our understanding and study of history.

Now, in case you were tempted to join the Black Friday madness, here is a little inoculation for you.

“Rabbi Lets Consumerism Have It Between the i’s” by Jonathan Wynne-jones and Martin Beckford in The Sydney Morning Herald. This is not a new message, but it is stated once more with some force by a prominent British Rabbi and member of the House of Lords, Jonathan Sacks. While not wanting to invoke too much self-loathing, I did find it interesting that, as the article noted, “Although religious leaders have recently used increasingly strong language to condemn banks and politicians over the financial crisis and the gap between rich and poor, few have directly criticised ordinary people for their materialism.” There is a lot of finger pointing going on these days, but seemingly very little by way of introspection. I’ll leave it at that.

Speaking of which, if you place yourself right of center on the political spectrum, you may find these two pieces from prominent conservative writers instructive:

“A Caveman Won’t Beat a Salesman” by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal

and

“When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality” by David Frum in NY Magazine

If you are left of center, here is the companion piece to Frum’s:

“When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable” by Jonathan Chait.

I’ll leave you to answer those two questions.

Moving from politics to a very political and technological issue: energy policy.

“The Myth of Renewable Energy” by Dawn Stover in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: I’m far from expert on these matters, but this struck me as a rather grim, but well reasoned piece. The key point is straightforward: all renewable energies seem to have hidden and unsustainable factors worked in.

Not wanting to leave you on a downer this weekend, here is another sharp post from the folks at Cyborgology.

“Hipster Rivivalism: Authentic Technologies of Days Gone Past” by David Strohecker: Strohecker takes a look at the hipster fascination with vintage technologies and the quest for authenticity. It’s an interesting cultural trend as I’ve noted before here, and, I suspect, a symptom of the human condition groping for expression.

It’s a messy world out there right now, and storm clouds seem perpetually to be gathering on the horizon. At the risk of sounding trite, such times, for all of the angst they induce, can also have the effect of clarifying and reordering our priorities. I trust you still found much to be thankful for this week and, having already mentioned Tolkien, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite lines from the Two Towers. At the bleakest moment, Aragorn nonetheless manages to affirm, “Yet, dawn is ever the hope of men.”

The Invention of Invention

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

It’s tempting to think that the experience of rapid technological change is something novel to our own time. In fact, I know I’ve been guilty of giving that impression myself. But consider this passage* from a sermon delivered by Dominican Fra Giordano of Pisa at Santa Maria Novella in Florence on February 23, 1306:

“Not all the arts have been found; we shall never see an end of finding them. Everyday one could discover a new art … indeed they are being found all the time. It is not twenty years since there was discovered the art of making spectacles which help you to see well, and which is one of the best and most necessary in the world. And that is such a short time ago that a new art, which never before existed, was invented …. I myself saw the man who discovered and practiced it, and I talked with him.”

We might debate the real pace of technological advance then and now, but the phenomenological experience of change described by Giordano has a rather contemporary ring. According to historian of technology Lynn White, not only does this passage give us the best evidence for the appearance of eye glasses, it also gives witness to the “invention of invention.” According to White, it was at the height of the much maligned Medieval period that, “Technicians … in large numbers began to consider systematically all the imaginable ways of solving a problem.”

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* Lynn White cites this passage in his essay, “Cultural Climates and Technological Advance,” found in Medieval Religion and Technology.

The Art of Technology and Empire

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 9 Comments

The phrase “Manifest Destiny” is likely one of those bits from high school history class that lingers on in most Americans’ memory for no obvious reason; in much the same way, for example, that I remember William Katt’s name (you know, the guy who starred in Greatest American Hero). If our memory serves us a little better than most, we’ll recall that the destiny that was so plainly manifest was America’s destiny to possess all of the territory between the eastern states and Pacific Ocean. “Go West young man!” and all of that.

What you may not immediately think of even if you do remember your American history class lucidly is the important role that technology played in the ideology of Westward expansion. In Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America’s Civilizing Mission, Michael Adas lays out that case in convincing detail. If David Nye’s American Technological Sublime successfully argues that the experience of the technological sublime has been America’s civil religion, then Adas has documented the attendant missionary project.

In the likely event that you don’t have time to read Adas’ sizable book, here’s the “Manifest Destiny” portion of his argument in a visual nutshell:

John Gast, “American Progress” (1872)

Yes, that is telegraph line that she is stringing out. I tend to think that the old line, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” is generally misleading, but in this case, it just might work. The portrait, according to historian Merritt Roe Smith*, was commissioned by publicist George Crofutt who tasked John Gast with painting a “beautiful and charming female … floating westward through the air, bearing on her forehead the ‘Star of Empire.'” The beautiful female was to carry a book in her right hand symbolizing the “common school — the emblem of education” while with her left she “unfolds and stretches the slender wires of the telegraph, that are to flash intelligence throughout the land …”

Crofutt also wanted Gast to depict certain elements “fleeing from ‘Progress'”; these included “the Indians, buffalo, wild horses, bears and other game.” The Indians were to “turn their despairing faces toward the setting sun, as they flee from the presence of wondrous vision. The ‘Star’ is too much for them.” We should, by now, know this unfortunate part of the story well.

Smith neatly summarizes the significance of the painting: “As art goes, ‘American Progress’ is not a work of great distinction. But as a popular allegory that amalgamates the idea of America’s Manifest Destiny with an old republican symbol (the goddess Liberty, now identified as Progress) and associates progress with technological change (represented by telegraph lines, the railroads, the steam ships, the cable bridge, and the urban landscape in the background), it is a remarkable achievement.”

One could read a political allegory into the evolution of goddess Liberty into goddess Progress. A similar sort of allegory that might arise if we were to compare John Trumbull’s famous (if not quite accurate) paining of the signing of the Declaration of Independence with this later painting by Christian Schussele, “Men of Progress”:

Christian Schussele, “Men of Progress” (1863)

The two paintings are linked by the image of Benjamin Franklin who, in Trumbull’s paining, is positioned prominently before the Declaration of Independence by the side of John Hancock and, in Schussele’s work, appears in the portrait in the top left of the scene watching approvingly over these 19th century men of progress. These men included Samuel Colt, Cyrus McCormick, Charles Goodyear, Elias Howe, and Samuel Morse. We might safely call this the American Pantheon, and may not be too far off the mark if we gather that the reverence paid the Founders had been, by the middle of the 19th century, transferred to these “men of progress.”

And, of course, the century was all about Progress. That sentiment was captured in this lithograph by Currier and Ives from 1876:

Currier and Ives, “The Progress of the Century” (1876)

The telegraph tape reads, “Liberty and Union, Now and Forever” along with “One and Inseparable” and “Glory to God in the Highest, On Earth Peace and Good Will Toward Men.” These political and religious sentiments are not only conveyed by the telegraph; the realities they articulate are effectively secured by the telegraph — and the railroad, and the steam boat, etc. It is technology that binds the nation together and the whole project is given a theological hue (further reinforcing Nye’s thesis).

James P. Boyd, writing in 1899, looked back upon the 19th century and marveled: “Indeed, it may be said that along many lines of invention and progress which have most intimately affected the life and civilization of the world, the nineteenth century has achieved triumphs and accomplished wonders equal, if not superior, to all other centuries combined.” This was a rose colored assessment, to be sure; it glossed over some of the century’s darker shades and, of course, seemed oblivious to the cataclysms that lay ahead.

What Boyd’s rhetoric does capture is the reduction of the notion of Progress to the narrow channel of technical advance. All other measures — be they political, religious, or cultural — are subsumed within the grand narrative of the evolution of technology. The lineaments of what Neil Postman termed technopoly have, by the close of the 19th century, begun to appear.

Early into the 21st century, we may find a painting like “American Progress” naive at best, if not offensive and misguided. Boyd’s rhetoric may strike us as grandiose and a bit too earnest. Both together suffering from a bad case of what Adas has called techno-hubris. And yet, how far do we have to go back to find similarly effusive and eschatological hopes attached to the World Wide Web and the Information Superhighway? To what degree have we continued to measure progress by the single measure of technical innovation, forsaking more demanding political and ethical standards? And haven’t we also paid homage to the goddess of technological progress, stripped perhaps of some of her earlier glory, no longer radiant, illuminated now by the lesser light of some backlit screen?

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*Citations from Merritt Roe Smith are drawn from his essay, “Technological Determinism in American Culture,” in Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism.