Cause or Consequence: Science, Technology, and Regulatory Change in the Oil Business in Texas, 1930–1975

Abstract

Cause or Consequence: Science, Technology, and Regulatory Change in the Oil Business in Texas, 1930—1975 EDWARD W. CONSTANT II Current attitudes about technological determinism fall all over the lot. Metaphysicians, who see technology as autonomous and out of control, driving civilization to social or literal doom, shade off into neo-Marxists, who see technology solely as the pernicious instrument of class oppression.1 Others see technology purely as social construct, the creature and product of evanescent social relations.2 Some his­ torians of technology see technology as a singularly powerful, al­ though hardly singular, factor in transforming social relations,3 while others see it as integral to the “seamless web” of history itself.'4 Still others perceive technology as distinctive but highly variable, both in its intrinsic properties and in its social consequences.5 In this mixed Dr. Constant is associate professor of history at Carnegie-Mellon University and is the author of The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution. ‘See Hugh G.J. Aitken, The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900— 1932 (Princeton, N.J., 1985), for his excellent summary and discussion of the work of Jacques Ellul, Langdon Winner, and David Noble. 2See the essays by Michel Calion, Bruno Latour, Wiebe Bijker, and Trevor Pinch in The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, ed. Wiebe Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge, Mass., 1987). 3David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800—1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore, 1984); Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977). ‘Thomas P. Hughes, “The Seamless Web: Technology, Science, Etcetera, Etcetera,” Social Studies of Science 16 (May 1986): 281—92. ’’See Aitken (n. 1 above) for a superb analysis of technologies as lying along dimen­ sions of manageable-unmanageable, predictable-unpredictable, and evolutionaryrevolutionary . Kranzberg’s first law also applies: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral”—“Technology and History: ‘Kranzberg’s Laws,’ ” Technology and Culture 27 (July 1986): 545. Other recent studies that stress the multiple goals and purposes, and the sometimes quite unintended consequences, technological development may have include: Leonard S. Reich, The Making of American Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876—1926 (New York, 1985); Stuart W. Leslie, Boss Kettering (New York, 1983); and George S. Wise, Willis R. Whitney, General Electric, and the Origins of U.S. Industrial Research (New York, 1985).©1989 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/89/3002-0002$01.00 426 The Oil Business in Texas, 1930—1975 427 company, Carl Condit long ago staked out a large middle ground. In the vast and diverse corpus of his scholarship, Condit typically por­ trays technology, whether building technique, architectural design, urban planning, or electrified railways, as inextricably interwoven with the social fabric of which it is a part. I take it that, for him, this integral quality that technology has entails more than just responsiveness to the usual economic, political, and social factors. For Condit, technol­ ogy expresses, or ought to express, both values and cultural aspira­ tions, and therefore cannot be understood without attention to its cultural meaning.6 The four episodes from the history of the oil business in Texas (admittedly a topic far from Condit’s interests and sympathies) that are discussed in this article are intended to convey a similar message. The core argument these examples are meant to illustrate and support can be stated with some precision: In any empirical sense, technology is in principle both indeterminant and indeterminate. Technology is indeterminant in two ways. It is not autonomous, that is, it is not selfdetermining : the future course of technology cannot be predicted from its current state or previous trajectory alone, nor can the past course of technological change be explained retrospectively purely by reference to technology alone. Neither is technology alone determi­ nant of anything else: Its consequences cannot be derived only from a particular state of technology or prior technological trajectory. While assuredly possessed of its own internal dynamic, technology, like sci­ ence, does not determine in and of itself its...