by Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx (Editors)
304 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.78 x 8.96 x 5.99
Publisher: MIT Press; (June 2, 1994)
ISBN: 0262691671
Chapter 1
Technological Determinism in American Culture
by Merritt Roe Smith
In this essay, Merritt Roe Smith provides a brief history of technological determinism and shows how deeply in such thought is embedded in American culture. He maintains that, as early as a 1780's, public servants like Tench Coxe began to attribute agency to the new mechanical technologies associated with the rise of the factory system. He reveals, moreover, that the technocratic spirit Coxe represented grew by leaps and bounds during the 19th century as the United States explains rapid industrial expansion and gained status as a world power. Smith also shows how artists, advertisers, and professional historians contributed to the emergence of a widespread popular belief in technology as the driving force in society. He even detects elements of technological determinism in his writings of the scholars who became the most outspoken critics of modern technological society.
The belief in technology as a key governing force in society dates back at least to the early stages of Industrial Revolution. Referred to as "technological determinism" by 20th-century scholars, disbelief affirms the changes in technology exert a greater influence on societies and their processes and any other factor. Indeed, one contemporary rider refers to himself as a technocentrist maintains that "technology broadly conceived, along with its lesser sibling Science, is essential force in the modern world, or important to defining patterns and problems of 20th-century life and international conflict, national politics, the maldistribution of wealth, and differences of class and gender, because it is in some sense prior to all of these." [1] Within this genre of thought and expression one can discern two versions of technological determinism: a "soft view," which holds that technological change drives social change but at the same time respondents discriminatingly to social pressures, and a "hard view," which perceives technological development as an autonomous force, completely independent of social constraints. [2]
The intellectual heritage of technological determinism can be traced to the enthusiasm and faith in technology essay liberating force expressed by leaders of the 18th-century enlightenment Act. Within this tradition at least two streams of thought-one enthusiastic, the other critical-contributed to the formulation of the determinist position. Both viewpoints hold technology and science to be powerful agents of social change. This is noteworthy because deterministic thinking to grew when people began to attribute agency to technology essay historical force. One sees such thought and the celebration of the new science Bible tear, James Ferguson, and J. T. Desauliers, and a memorable vs. of Alexander Pope in Diderot's Encyclopedie, in James Watt's ingenious feedback mechanisms, and popular 18th-century metaphor of a clockwork universe, and even in the critical perspectives of such later essayists as Thomas Carlyle. Above all, deterministic thinking can be seen in the conception and popular acceptance during the 18th-century of the idea of progress. [3]
While technological determinism initially sprouted in Europe, it found even more fertile ground and the newly independent United States-primarily because Americans were so taken with the idea of progress. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, foremost among the nation's profits of progress, were true believers and human-kind's steady moral and material improvement. As added proponents of the cause of liberty, they looked to the new mechanical technologies of the era as means of achieving the virtuous and prosperous republican society that they associated with goals of the American Revolution. For them, progress meant the pursuit of technology and science in the interest of human bettermeant (intellectual, moral, spiritual) and material prosperity. Both men emphasize that prosperity and little without betterment; a proper balance between them had to be maintained. Indeed, Jefferson's oft-repeated reservations about large-scale manufacturing reflected his concern about the fragility of liberty, power, and virtue in society and his sense of how easily a republic could be corrupted. If carried to extremes, Jefferson worried, the civilizing process of large-scale technology and industrialization might easily be corrupted and bring down the moral and political economy he and his contemporaries had worked so hard to erect. As much as Jefferson esteemed discovery and invention, he considered than means to achieving a larger social end. For his part, Benjamin Franklin refused to patent his inventions, floor, as he put it, "we enjoyed great advantages from the intentions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of hours, and this we should do freely and generously." An exemplar of the Enlightenment, the author of Poor Richard's memorable aphorisms considered his inventions not a source of private wealth but a benefit for all members of society. [4]
However, just when Franklin and Jefferson were espousing a new republican technology sensitive to human perfection, and more technocratic vision of progress was beginning to emerge. Evident in the speeches and writings of Alexander Hamilton and his associate at the U.S. Treasury Department, Tench Coxe, this new viewpoint openly attributed agency and value to the age's impressive mechanical technologies and began to protect them as an independent force in society. Although Hamilton is remembered as countries leading exponent of mechanized manufacturing during the 1790's, Coxe (1755-1824) was its most eloquent and persistent advocate. Like many of his contemporaries, Coxe believed that America's political independence finished on the establishment of economic independence. Given the countries dependent economic status, he emphasized the need for machine-based manufactures as the prime solution to its political problems. Indeed, he told an audience of sympathetic listeners in the summer of 1787 that manufacturing under the factory system represented "the means of our POLITICAL SALVATION." "It will," he noted, "consume our native productions...it will accelerate the improvement of our internal navigation...it will lead us once more into the paths of virtue by restoring frugality and industry, those potent antidotes to the vices of mankind and will give us real independence by rescuing us from the tyranny of foreign fashions, and the destructive torrent of luxury." [5] whereas Jefferson had emphasized technological development in the interest of spiritual needs of individual citizens, Coxe shifted the emphasis away from human bettermeant and toward more and personal societal ends, particularly the establishment of law and order in an unstable political economy. From the start, technological determinism prove highly compatible with the search for political order.
As industrial capitalism gained a firmer grip on the American economy during the early decades of the 19th century, Coxe's technocratic perspectives became increasingly dominant among other segments of the population. [6] while evidence of tension and discontent could be found among the new class of industrial workers and in the works of certain artist and intellectuals, by and large journalists, popular orders, and politicians hailed "the progress of the age," reassuring or audiences that technological innovation not only exemplified but actually guaranteed progress. The evidence for progress and incontrovertible. Decade by decade the pace of technological change quickened-railroads, steamships, machine tools, telegraphy, structures of iron and steel, electricity-and with each decade the popular enthusiasm for "man of progress" and for their inventions grew. Ralph Waldo Emerson, often a critic of the new mechanical age, exclaimed "Life scene is made over a new." "Are not our inventors," asked another enthusiastic writer, "absolutely ushering in the very gone of the millennium?" It's certainly seemed so to Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune. Upon visiting New York's Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1853, he pronounced: "We have universalized all the beautiful and glorious results of industry and skill. We have made them a common possession of the people. ... We have democratized than means and appliances are they hire life." A writer of the prominent North American Review asserted that the benefits of machinery "are seen every where, felt every where, and must abide forever." [7]
[1] Memo from Wade Raush to the author, March 31, 1992 (in the author's possession).
[2] Although he does not adopt the adjectives "soft" and "hard," Thomas J. Misa distinguishes between the various versions of technological determinism in "How Machines Make History, and How Historians (and Others) Help Them to Do So." (Science, Technology, and Human Values 13 (1988): 308-331) (see esp. p. 309). For a criticism and a denial of the distinction between hard and soft determinism, see Bruce Bimber's essay in this volume. Also see Alex Rowland, "Theories and Models of Technological Change: Semantics and Substance," Science, Technology, and Human Values 17 (1992): 90-92.
[3] For an introduction to the literature on technology and the idea of progress, see Merritt Road Smith, "Technology, Industrialization, and the Idea of Progress in America," in Responsible Science: the Impact of Technology on Society. ed. K B Byrne (Harper and row, 1986), and Leo Marx, "Does Improve Technology Named Progress?" Technology Review (January 1987): 33-41, 71.
[4] Smith, "Technology, Industrialization, and the Idea of Progress in America," PP.2-4; Marx, "Does Improve Technology Mean Progress?" PP. 35-37 (Franklin quote: P.36).
[5] Tench Coxe. An Address to Assembly of the Friends of American Manufactures, Convened by the Purpose of Establishing a Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts. Read It and the University Of Pennsylvania on Thursday the Ninth of August 1787. Reprinted and The Philosophy of Manufactures: Early Debates over Industrialization in the United States, ed. M B Folsom and S D Lubar (MIT press, 1982) (quote from pp. 61-62). For perceptive treatments of Coxe's writings see John F. Kasson, Civilizing for Machine (Grossman, 1976), and Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (Oxford University press, 1964), pp. 150-169.
[6] Leo Marx provides an insightful discussion of the origins of the technocratic spirit in his contribution to this audience.
[7] "Works and Days," in Emerson's Works, volume 7, Society and Solitude (Houghton, Mifflin, 1870), p. 158; Douglas T. Miller, The Birth of Modern America, 1820-1850 (Pegasus, 1970), p. 32; Horace Greeley, ed., Art and Industry at the Crystal Palace (Redfield, 1853, pp. 52-53; "Effects of Machinery," North American Review (Boston) 34 (January 1832): 226-227. For further documentation see Hugo A. Meier, "Technology and Democracy, 1800-1860," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (1957): 618-640, and Russell B. Nye, Society and Culture in America, 1830-1860 (Harper & Row, 1974), pp. 3-31, to 58.
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