Computerizing the Swedish Welfare State: The Middle Way of Technological Success and Failure THOMAS KAISER FELD Historians of technology often attempt to give structure to the historical development of artifacts. They adopt various theoretical approaches in so doing, several ofwhich treat technology as a social construction.1 According to these theories, new technology is a prod uct ofconfrontation between different “relevant social groups,” and new technologies are shaped throughout the course of their devel opment by different groups with different preferences.2 Social con structivists assume that individuals in these groups act for the sake of mutual advantage. Each individual appears to be a participant in a rational discourse wherein nobody does anything for anyone not sharing his or her social group affiliation. Relationships among dif ferent groups are usually portrayed as confrontational. Sometimes, to be sure, members of a group may be identified by their shared basic assumptions about the nature of the world, assumptions which may be said to have ideological foundations. But social constructivMr . Kaiserfeld is a doctoral candidate in the history of technology at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He gratefully acknowledges the help ofArne Kaijser, Svante Lindqvist, Anders Lundgren, Jorgen Nissen, Bryan Pfaffenberger, Bernard Vowles (translation), and the Technology and Culture referees. He also thanks Ulf Eklund, Ingvar Gratte, Bo Jansson, Bengt Nilsson, Gunnar Svanborg, and Bertil Widmark for the information they provided about the Compis project. ‘See, e.g., Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York, 1934); Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880—1930 (Baltimore, 1983); George Basalla, TheEvolution ofTechnology (Cambridge, 1988); Arnold Pacey, Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History (Cambridge, Mass., 1990). 2Introduction to The Social Construction ofTechnological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History ofTechnology, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), pp. 1-6; Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker, “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other,” in Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch, eds., pp. 17-50. See also Sergio Sismondo, “Some Social Constructions,” Social Studies of Science 23 (1993): 515-53.© 1996 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/96/3702-0002$01.00 249 250 Thomas Kaiserfeld ists on the whole attach little import to dreams and ideas about how a world might possibly be changed with the aid of new technology.3 This article will analyze the ideologies informing efforts to con struct a Swedish school computer, from 1981, when the Swedish gov ernment decided to sponsor the computer, until production was dis continued in 1988. By ideology I mean a system of values, convictions, and norms. Under such a definition the ideology char acterizing a political party is merely one ideology among many. And of course ideology need not be political. It may permeate a society, and the system of education within a society.4 To understand the establishment and development of the Swedish school computer it is important both to identify the different social groups active in its development, and to describe the basic ideological assumptions made by these groups.3 The Compis, as the school computer came to be called, was an artifact whose creation had two purposes: to give Swedish industry the chance to develop new technology and to provide the Swedish compulsory school and upper secondary school systems with mod ern and inexpensive computers. From a historical perspective, it cre ated what historian of technology Langdon Winner has called “a way of settling an issue in a particular community [that was] strongly compatible with particular kinds of political relationships.”6 But Compis was never a market success. To the extent that the computer has been discussed at all, it is rather as an example of a “technical failure,” a product that did not perform to expectations. It contrast to many historical and sociological studies of technology, in which ’This has been pointed out in Hughie Mackay and Gareth Gillespie, “Extending the Social Shaping of Technology Approach: Ideology and Appropriation,” Social Studies of Science 22 (1992): 685-716, see 691. 'This definition of and distinction between...