RCA and the VideoDisc: The Business of Research by Margaret B. W. Graham

Abstract

324 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE vision, print, or the movies, but instead in the possibilities provided by the emergence and widespread availability of the new computer and microcomputer technology” (p. 3). With a straightforward and generally optimistic view of our current era of technological change, Eugene Provenzo elaborates his thesis in eight brief chapters, touching on the information society, “telematics” (the combination ofcomputers and telecommunications systems), data bases, microcomputers and education, and artificial intelligence. The influence of McLuhan is apparent in every chapter. Historians will certainly be dissatisfied with this book. They are often dissatisfied with McLuhan himself for his polemical treatment of the history of technology and ideas, and Beyond the Gutenberg Galaxy is a modest imitation of McLuhan’s own sweeping analyses. McLuhan’s work was filled with historical analogies, often quite controversial but always thought-provoking. Provenzo offers little beyond his one his­ torical analogy, the invention of the printing press, and he does not explore this analogy in detail. There are also predictable references to the Luddites, to the dystopians George Orwell, Samuel Butler, and Aldous Huxley, and to such writers as Jacques Ellul and Daniel Bell on the possibilities and dangers of our technological future. In short, a skeptical reader will not find any new arguments or evidence to help assess the importance of the computer as a new technology of information. However, to be fair, the book is not written to convince scholars; it is rather an introduction, suitable for use in an introductory class on technology and culture. Provenzo’s one his­ torical parallel, although obvious, is not inappropriate. The computer is the heir to the printing press, a new technology for reading and writing the whole range of symbol systems that we possess. What remains to be done is to go beyond Beyond the Gutenberg Galaxy by showing in detail how electronic writing fits into the history of writing. Electronic writing needs to be clearly explained; its uses need to be carefully compared to those not only of the printed book but also of such earlier technologies as the medieval codex, the ancient papyrus roll, and the clay or stone tablet. Only in the light of such comparisons can we decide whether a “post-typographic culture” is indeed emerging. Jay David Bolter Dr. Bolter teaches in the Department of Classics at the University of North Car­ olina—Chapel Hill. RCA and the VideoDisc: The Business of Research. By Margaret B. W. Graham. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Pp. xiv + 258; illustrations, notes, appendix, index. $19.95. Margaret B. W. Graham is a historian, a professor at Boston Uni­ versity’s School of Management, and a consultant to business on the TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 325 effective use of corporate R&D. Her RCA and the VideoDisc details the story of Selectavision VideoDisc, a videoplayer that was a market fail­ ure, and she uses the case to draw lessons in handling the unavoidable uncertainties of industrial research. The history she presents is es­ sentially a tale of management. Yet it will be valuable to historians of technology in heightening our sensitivity to corporate policies and politics that affect the conduct of industrial R&D. The research that led to RCA’s VideoDisc player—introduced in 1981 and withdrawn in 1984—began in 1965. Graham starts earlier, however, with the formative years of David Sarnoff, RCA’s most in­ fluential executive from 1930 into the 1960s. This is necessary because elements of corporate history helped shape the VideoDisc episode: most especially, the prominence Sarnoffgave R&D in RCA’s corporate image and corporate policy, the character the RCA Laboratories took on in the two decades after World War II, and the company’s expe­ rience in developing first black-and-white, and then color, television. Chapters 2 and 3, accordingly, lead us from Sarnoff’s career in Amer­ ican Marconi in the 1910s through to RCA’s commercialization of color TV in the 1950s. These chapters, based chiefly on published sources, are in my opin­ ion the book’s weakest. Aside from a subtle and insightful recapitu­ lation at the end ofchapter 3, the treatment is light, almostjournalistic. The style is somewhatjumpy, with flashbacks and flash-forwards and...