The Power of the Machine: The Impact of Technology from 1700 to the Present Day by R. A. Buchanan

Abstract

190 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE of important national sites. While these essays recapitulate much of the content of the first part of the book, their intrinsic value lies in their consideration of technological history in terms of built environ­ ments and the rise of the new specialty of industrial preservation. Marie Nisser, in her general introduction to this section and in her description of the industrial heritage of Sweden, traces the growth of the meaning of “industrial heritage” in recent decades from archaeo­ logical artifacts to an examination of working life and its environment to an inclusive presentation of local human and natural environments in regional “ecomuseums.” The reader can only hope that such Nordic developments as substantial labor union support for working life museums and the creation of museum trails dedicated to a region’s industry will find an echo in North America. One can also hope that industrial heritage guides on the model of this second part of Technology and Industry will become available on these shores. The maps in this second section keep the nonScandinavian reader oriented. While the commentary and diagrams for specific sites are constantly informative, the same cannot be said of all the photographs. Showing factory exteriorsjust does not convey all that much. North Americans should emulate not only this volume’s industrial heritage section but also its presentation of history of technology tied to geographic regions. An industrial overview of the Northeast could be written keyed to the fall line, of the South keyed to plantation labor systems, of the West keyed to aridity’s challenge to technologies. Technology and Industry not only provides an education to historians of technology outside Scandinavia, it provides them a model. Brian O’Donnell Mr. O’Donnell is a doctoral student in the Science, Technology, and Society program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1992 he was a visiting scholar and instructor in the Department of the History of Science and Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The Power ofthe Machine: The Impact ofTechnologyfrom 1700 to the Present Day. By R. A. Buchanan. London: Viking, 1992. Pp. xvii + 299; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $30.00; £20.00. When historians of technology reach a certain age, there grows an urge in them to write something synoptic, comprehensive, and popular; to describe the world as they see it, not for their colleagues but for the public at large. A number of such works have appeared in recent years. The book under review here, by a distinguished colleague, Angus Buchanan, who is professor of history of technology at the University of Bath and recipient of SHOT’S Leonardo da Vinci Medal, seems to belong to that category. The author does not name TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 191 the audience at which he has aimed the book, but it does not report new research, does not engage in current scholarly debate, does not exhibit any interest in questions of historical method: it is not intended, in other words, for the professional historian. Nor is it a work for the beginner: if it were meant to serve as a textbook it would have been equipped with a more comprehensive bibliography. In­ stead, as the author states, “it is the object of this book to explain how technology has affected life in the modern world, and thereby to come to an understanding of its potentialities and dangers” (p. xiv). The Power ofthe Machine is structured in three sections: a methodologi­ cal introduction called “Background — Definitions and Chronology”; a main section, subdivided into “Sources of Power” and “Applications of Power,” offering a conventional review of technological history; and a final section, “The Social Context.” If the book has a distinct point of view, used to organize its story and to interpret what is reported, it would be the concept of “technological revolution.” Used in the singular, this “can be seen as a sort of accelerated evolution” and “is a process rather than an event ... a comprehensive and continuing process” (pp. 36, 37) beginning in the West around 1700, today going on worldwide, and responsible for the quickly changing condition of our planet. The principal agent in this revolution...