Technologies of Power

by Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht (Eds.)

• ISBN13: 9780262011846
• ISBN10: 0262011840
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-05-21
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

This collection explores how technologies become forms of power, how people embed their authority in technological systems, and how the machines and the knowledge that make up technical systems strengthen or reshape social, political, and cultural power. The authors suggest ways in which a more nuanced investigation of technology's complex history can enrich our understanding of the changing meanings of modernity. They consider the relationship among the state, expertise, and authority; the construction of national identity; changes in the structure and distribution of labor; political ideology and industrial development; and political practices during the Cold War. The essays show how insight into the technological aspects of such broad processes can help synthesize material and cultural methods of inquiry and how reframing technology's past in broader historical terms can suggest new directions for science and technology studies. The essays were written in honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes, whose spirit of inquiry they seek to continue. Contributors: Janet Abbate, Michael Thad Allen, W. Bernard Carlson, Gabrielle Hecht, Erik P. Rau, Eric Schatzberg, Amy Slaton, John Staudenmaier, Edmund N. Todd, Hans Weinberger.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Disciplined Imagination: The Life and Work of Tom and Agatha Hughes	ix
John M. Staudenmaier, S.J.
Introduction: Authority, Political Machines, and Technology's History	1	(24)
Gabrielle Hecht
Michael Thad Allen
The Telephone as Political Instrument: Gardiner Hubbard and the Formation of the Middle Class in America, 1875-1880	25	(32)
W. Bernard Carlson
Culture and Technology in the City: Opposition to Mechanized Street Transportation in Late-Nineteenth-Century America	57	(38)
Eric Schatzberg
The Hidden Lives of Standards: Technical Prescriptions and the Transformation of Work in America	95	(50)
Amy Slaton
Janet Abbate
Engineering Politics, Technological Fundamentalism, and German Power Technology, 1900-1936	145	(30)
Edmund N. Todd
Modernity, the Holocaust, and Machines without History	175	(40)
Michael Thad Allen
Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making: The British Origins of Operational Research	215	(38)
Erik P. Rau
Technology, Politics, and National Identity in France	253	(42)
Gabrielle Hecht
The Neutrality Flagpole: Swedish Neutrality Policy and Technological Alliances, 1945-1970	295	(38)
Hans Weinberger
About the Authors	333	(4)
Index	337