IV.

Historical Perspectives

Historical accounts of technology can be constructed from many different perspectives, each of which may help in the understanding of this complex enterprise.

At the most general level, attempts have been made to discern and characterize distinctive periods in the evolution of technology. Writing in the 1930s, the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset identified three. In the first and longest period, there were no systematic techniques for the discovery and development of technological devices. The earliest toolmakers' achievements such as stone axes, scrapers, and control of fire were no more than the products of chance. In the second period, certain technological skills had become sufficiently conscious to be passed from one generation to the next by accomplished practitioners. These craftsmen, however, had no systematic body of knowledge about their devices. Possession of this kind of knowledge, resulting from analytical modes of thought associated with modern science, characterized the third period and empowered people—in a radically different way from previously—to realize their technological goals.

Also in the 1930s, Lewis Mumford published his classic work Technics and Civilization, including an analysis of the last 1,000 years of the development of technology in terms of three successive, but overlapping and interpenetrating, phases. The first, “eotechnic” phase (roughly ad 1000 to 1750) was characterized by raw materials such as wood, glass, and water, with increased use of horse power and energy from wind and water. This was followed by a “palaeotechnic” phase (roughly 1750 to 1900) a period of “carboniferous capitalism” characterized by a coal and iron complex and the steam engine. Beyond this came a “neotechnic” phase, with science prominent and an electricity-alloy complex with new materials such as plastics coming into use. Electrical energy and diesel and petrol combustion engines replaced the steam engine.

Despite similarities, both of these analyses fail to reflect the impact of technology or the technological characteristics of the late 20th century. Achievements here include new fabrication resources, including composites and “smart” materials which can respond to changes around them and behave as if possessing a memory. Technology has extended into the realm of the living with, for example, genetically engineered strains of “improved” plants and animals. Nuclear power is an alternative, if controversial, energy source. Dramatically enhanced means of communication and information processing are widely available and there has been a substantial growth of complex socio-technical systems relating to almost every aspect of work and everyday life—such as the ones encountered at the supermarket checkout or when buying a flight ticket.

The scale of these technological innovations and the speed of their implementation are quite different from anything experienced in previous phases of the evolution of technology. At the same time a distinguishing feature of the age has been a growing awareness of negative aspects of technology. Technological disasters of unprecedented magnitude have occurred and been widely publicized: the list is long and includes spillages from giant oil tankers; the 1984 tragedy at Bhopal, India, when an explosion at the Union Carbide chemicals plant led to the escape of methyl isocyanate and the death of over 3,000 people, the worst industrial accident to date; the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster, when the spacecraft exploded just after the launch killing seven astronauts; and also in 1986, the Chernobyl disaster when a fire in the core of a Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl' in Ukraine resulted in 31 deaths and the spewing out of deposits of radioactive debris, which fell on many regions of the world—the world's worst nuclear industry accident.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development—widely known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992—brought into prominence issues such as climatic change, sustainable development, and the more responsible management of global resources, with particular regard to environmental pollution, waste disposal, and a reduction in the gap in technological capacity between developed and developing countries. In this spectacular new phase, as the 20th century closes, any characterization of technology would be incomplete if it failed to acknowledge its inescapable moral dimension. Perhaps no other technological developments have more vividly brought home this realization than those in the field of atomic energy since the dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. As Robert Oppenheimer, scientific leader of the Manhattan Project which produced the original bombs, later remarked: “the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose”.

Less comprehensive historical studies have shed further light on the nature and development of technology. A broad distinction can be drawn between so-called internalist and contextualist accounts. In the internalist description the focus is predominantly on the design features of the particular devices and on related matters such as the nature of technical improvements and the stimulus provided to other inventions. Medieval fortifications, ploughs and ploughshares, keyboard mechanisms, clocks, steel cantilever bridges, chain mail, steam engines, space rockets, and the mariner's compass have been, and are typical, subjects for internalist histories. Informative though these are, such accounts tend to provide little in the way of explanation of why artefacts have taken the form they did and why mutations in those artefacts have occurred.

In contrast, contextualist accounts place emphasis on the cultural factors which have influenced, and have been influenced by, technological developments. The economic, social, and political ambience in which the technological activity took place and in which it assumed its particular form becomes the focus of historical investigation.

Other external factors, for example geographical, legal, and environmental constraints, may also affect the shaping of technology and, in turn, contribute to a view of technology as itself an influence on the cultural context. For example, the study of the consequences for workers in the machine-tool industry of a technological development such as automation has served to locate technology in a political context and to highlight questions about the identity and motives of the social and managerial groups who took decisions about the particular form which the technology should assume.

A premise here is that there is nothing inevitable about any technological development. It could always have been different; other options were available. The technology we encounter is the result of decisions which reflect the value judgements of those who were in a position to shape the technology. It would seem that form not only follows function, but power as well.