Review Essay: Technology and Design—A New Agenda

Abstract

Special Section: Technology and Design REVIEW ESSAY: TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN— A NEW AGENDA BARRY M. KATZ At the time of their first appearance—as part of the pioneering crusades of Gordon Childe, Lewis Mumford, and Lefebvre des Noettes —the early histories of technology had the combative zeal of all missionary movements: a glaring omission in the human record stood to be rectified, and to do so required not so much an adden­ dum to conventional historiography as a fundamental rethinking of its premises. Once this challenge was accepted by a new generation of researchers the fledgling field had to surmount its position of presumed inferiority relative to the more established history of sci­ ence, and a spirited contentiousness once again animated much of the best writing of this era. In its maturity, historians of technology have rarely felt the need to defend the legitimacy of their field and have instead turned inward to conduct a searching and often polemi­ cal debate over such problems as the technical determination or social construction of its subject matter. The lesson here is that there comes a time in the life of any cam­ paign when the winning side must lay down its arms and, perhaps ruefully, acknowledge victory. We may revere the memory of Mum­ ford, but no one argues any longer that technology has figured im­ portantly in human affairs; few need to be convinced, following the work of Vincenti, Ferguson, and others, that technology is some­ thing more and other than the rote application of scientific princi­ ples. And today, despite the continuing bellicosity ofsome partisans, it seems clear that the forces oftechnological determinism have long since been driven from the field.1 To continue flailing against longDr . Katz is professor in the School of Architecture and Design at the California College of Arts and Crafts and consulting professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. His fourth book, The Work of the Hand in the Life of the Mind, will be published by the Princeton University Press. 'One reads with perplexity, for instance, the recent collection, Does Technology Drive History? in which a dozen of the leading scholars in the field whale mercilessly© 1997 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/97/3802-0007$01.00 452 Technology and Design—A New Agenda 453 defeated adversaries suggests a certain faintheartedness; it is time, one feels, to take on the next challenger. In this review of recent scholarship on design I hope to introduce a promising new vector into the cultural study of technology, one that holds the potential to enrich and extend our ongoing investiga­ tion of the built and manufactured environment.* 2 In contemporary industrial practice engineers often find designers to be unwelcome visitors from an alien intellectual universe, and this practical dichot­ omy has found its way into academic scholarship as well, in the form of essentially independent research strategies. “One tradition,” ob­ serves Carl Mitcham, “promotes methodological and empirical stud­ ies of engineering design processes; the other develops broad inter­ pretative studies of the aesthetic and cultural dimensions of artifacts.”3 In the last analysis, however, it is the designer who domes­ ticates new technology and makes it available for human use. This mutual dependency suggests that at the very least the study ofdesign can be deepened by an exposure to the more deeply rooted history of technology, and the study of technology invigorated by new tend­ encies in the history and theory of design. A representative sampling of this literature can be found in four recent anthologies prepared by the editors of the journal Design Is­ sues, which began publishing in 1984 at the University of Illinois (Chicago) and is now housed in the Department ofDesign at Carne­ gie Mellon University. Like Technology and Culture, Design Issues draws upon scholars from an array of disciplines—history, to be sure, but also sociology, linguistics, anthropology, philosophy, psychology— as well as upon literate and theoretically disposed practitioners, and upon a corpse that has shown no signs of life in years. Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, eds., Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemmas of Technological Determinism (Cambridge, Mass., 1994); reviewed, critically...