Infrastructure and Modernity: Force, Time, and Social Organization in the History of Sociotechnical Systems

This is true despite modernity’s constitutive babble/Babel of discourses about “technology.” Technology talk rarely concerns the full suite of sociotechnical systems characteristic of modern societies. Instead, at any given moment most technology discourse is about high tech, i.e. new or rapidly changing technologies. Today, these include handheld computers, genetically modified foods, the Global Positioning System, and the World Wide Web. Television, indoor plumbing, and ordinary telephony—yesteryear’s Next Big Things—draw little but yawns. Meanwhile, inventions of far larger historical significance, such as ceramics, screws, basketry, and paper, no longer even count as “technology.” Emerging markets in high-tech goods probably account for a great deal of techno-discourse. Corporations, governments, and advertisers devote vast resources to maintaining these goods at the forefront of our awareness, frequently without our realizing that they are doing so. Unsurprisingly, they often succeed.