American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870–1970 by Thomas P. Hughes

Abstract

Book Reviews American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870—1970. By Thomas P. Hughes. New York: Viking Penguin, 1989. Pp. xii + 529; illustrations, notes, index. $24.95. Broadly speaking, the point of the old high culture was to encour­ age people to make the most out of conditions that they could not do much about. As a civilizing agency, high culture developed a synthesis of human responses—from dour acceptance to lofty vision—as these responses interacted with each other within the fairly fixed context of reality. This synthesis, often defined as the best that bad been thought and said in the world, included intellectual, physical, and aesthetic propositions that invested existence with meaning and provided provisional organizing principles for human energy. It may be further noted that the kind of work that kept things going—subsistence and maintenance—was recognized as necessary by this culture but, for reasons too extensive to go into here, it was assigned a rather low place in the scheme of things. Also, in the gradual ascent of man a good deal of thinking went on, much of it “without attachment to results” and more of it simply as the pursuit of truth as an end in itself. Both of those manifestations occurred no doubt because sufficient information was not available to support the kind of work and thought we have become familiar with. Old high culture in its time offered steadying purposes, attractive diversions, magnificent assumptions, and arresting interpretations of many human possibilities. It took a long time to put it together, and it has served us long and well in the ordering of our actions, the defining of sensible objectives, and the establishing of a pattern of civilized responses. But the somber truth now is that so few of its contents connect usefully with so much that is happening today. Where earlier the concern was for the good life within the given conditions, now the interest is to change the very conditions them­ selves. As Thomas Hughes puts it succinctly in his opening remarks, we are now dealing with “the world as artifact.” Now that we can make or do almost anything, what should we make and do to create interesting, safe, and satisfying lives within conditions of our own devising? In short, what do we make of reality now that it has become a fabrication? Hughes is interested in how we got into this spot, in some of the significant things that have happened to us along the way, and, to a Permission to reprint a review printed in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 127 128 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE certain extent, in what lies ahead. Given the state of the art, that is, given that our systematic examination of our novel situation is in a primitive stage, the book he has written is clear, substantial, fair, and, on appropriate occasions, bold in diagnosis and treatment. He is especially interested in explaining how unexpected combinations of dissimilar energies and materials have significantly influenced the recent course of our development. At the start of American Genesis, Hughes asserts that “this book, despite its emphasis on invention, development, and technologicalsystem building, is not a history of technology, a work of specialization outside the mainstream of American history. To the contrary, it is mainstream history, an exploration of the American nation involved in its most characteristic activity.” I think that concealed in these sentences is a sense of frustration that must be recognized and shared by anyone who has worked in the field. Like an account of aberrant religious sects or experimental utopias, a study of engineering projects may have some interest in itself but it would hardly contribute to the shaping of the great Republic. That in fact is an opinion taken from the old high culture. Hughes is prepared to demonstrate that when one studies technology from 1870 to 1990 one is in fact confronting the very center of American experience. Hughes begins this demonstration with a book he did not intend to write—that is, with a history of technology. With minor exceptions of some soft spots in the matter of bridges and steel...