How Machines Make History, and how Historians (And Others) Help Them to Do So

If machines make history, they do so only with the assistance of others. For the most part, machines are mute and illiterate, and it is historians (and others) who decide the extent to which technology acts as an independent force to shape history. Vacillating between Marx and Mumford, historians, philosophers, and sociologists writing on technology in the last ten years have reached no consensus on technological determinism. Of the fields reviewed here, philosophers of technology are the most enthusiastic advocates of technological determinism. Business historians who emphasize technology's determining role in shaping modern business structures define one pole of historical writing; labor historians who detail workers' capabilities to blunt, transform, or even reject managers' efforts to introduce new technologies define the other pole. Urban, physical science, and technological historians hold intermediate positions. Recently, historians as well as sociologists of technology have taken steps to achieve the difficult feat of showing technology at once as socially constructed and society-shaping. On one level, this essay aims to identify patterns in these literatures. But disciplinary patterns are not the whole story. The principal argument is that those historians (and others) adopting a "macro" perspective are the ones who allow technology a causal role in historical change. They deploy the Machine to make history. This causal role for the Machine is not present and is not possible in studies adopting a "micro" perspective. "The single most influential theory of the relationship between technology and society is 'technological determinism,' " write MacKenzie and Wajc-

[1]  John B. Rae,et al.  Boss Kettering: Wizard of General Motors , 1983 .

[2]  T. P. Hughes,et al.  Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 , 1984 .

[3]  Larry Lankton,et al.  The Machine under the Garden: Rock Drills Arrive at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, 1868-1883 , 1983 .

[4]  Larry Owens,et al.  Vannevar Bush and the Differential Analyzer: The Text and Context of an Early Computer , 1991 .

[5]  Light, Heat, and Power , 1979 .

[6]  Carolyn C. Cooper,et al.  The Portsmouth System of Manufacture , 1984 .

[7]  The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System , 1987 .

[8]  L. Hoddeson The First Large-Scale Application of Superconductivity: The Fermilab Energy Doubler, 1972-1983 , 1987 .

[9]  J A Tarr The Separate vs. Combined Sewer Problem , 1979, Journal of urban history.

[10]  W. Hackmann Sonar Research and Naval Warfare 1914-1954: A Case Study of a Twentieth-Century Establishment Science , 1986 .

[11]  P. Forman Behind Quantum Electronics: National Security as Basis for Physical Research in the United States, 1940-1960 , 1987 .

[12]  J. Lesch Conceptual Change in an Empirical Science: The Discovery of the First Alkaloids , 1981 .

[13]  Charles A. Thrall The Conservative Use of Modern Household Technology , 1982 .

[14]  Philip J. Leahey Skilled labor and the rise of the modern corporation: The case of the electrical industry , 1985 .

[15]  Heather Lechtman,et al.  Andean Value Systems and the Development of Prehistoric Metallurgy , 2023 .

[16]  William Lazonick,et al.  Industrial Organization and Technological Change: The Decline of the British Cotton Industry , 1983, Business History Review.

[17]  Howard Falk,et al.  The Technological Society , 1965 .

[18]  Jonathan A. C. Brown Domestic Politics and Foreign Investment: British Development of Mexican Petroleum, 1889–1911 , 1987, Business History Review.

[19]  L. Winner Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought , 1977 .

[20]  John F. Guilmartin,et al.  The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 , 1984 .

[21]  T. Porter A Statistical Survey of Gases: Maxwell's Social Physics , 1981 .

[22]  Philip M. Marcus,et al.  The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business , 1979 .

[23]  S. Lubar Culture and Technological Design in the 19th-Century Pin Industry: John Howe and the Howe Manufacturing Company , 1987 .

[24]  Du Boff,et al.  Business Demand and the Development of the Telegraph in the United States, 1844–1860 , 1980, Business History Review.

[25]  D. Bloor Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge , 1985 .

[26]  Paul Barrett Cities and their Airports , 1987 .

[27]  S. B. Warner Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900 , 1962 .

[28]  B. Latour Science in action : how to follow scientists and engineers through society , 1989 .

[29]  Donald MacKenzie,et al.  The social shaping of technology : how the refrigerator got its hum , 1985 .

[30]  John Law On the Social Explanation of Technical Change: The Case of the Portuguese Maritime Expansion , 1987 .

[31]  D. L. LeMahieu The Gramophone: Recorded Music and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wars , 1982 .

[32]  Barton C. Hacker,et al.  Military Institutions and the Labor Process: Noneconomic Sources of Technological Change, Women’s Subordination, and the Organization of Work , 1987 .

[33]  J. Holt Trade unionism in the British and U.S. steel industries, 1880–1914: A comparative study , 1977 .

[34]  Seymour Howard The Steel Pen and the Modern Line of Beauty , 1985 .

[35]  Arnold Thackray,et al.  Technology's Storytellers: Reweaving the Human Fabric , 1986 .

[36]  A Critique of Technological Determinism , 1983 .

[37]  Michael French,et al.  Structural Change and Competition in the United States Tire Industry, 1920–1937 , 1986, Business History Review.

[38]  G. Kornblith The Craftsman as Industrialist: Jonas Chickering and the Transformation of American Piano Making , 1985, Business History Review.

[39]  Leonard S. Reich,et al.  The Making of American Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876-1926 , 1985 .

[40]  David Montgomery,et al.  The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925 , 1987 .

[41]  Robert Friedel,et al.  Inventing American Broadcasting 1899-1922 , 1989 .

[42]  Adrian Randall,et al.  The Philosophy of Luddism: The Case of the West of England Woolen Workers, ca. 1790-1809 , 1986 .

[43]  Philip L. Bereano,et al.  Household Technology and the Social Construction of Housework , 1984 .

[44]  A. Dawson The paradox of dynamic technological change and the labor aristocracy in the United States, 1880–1914 , 1979 .

[45]  Nathan Rosenberg,et al.  Inside the black box , 1983 .

[46]  D. Mowery Firm Structure, Government Policy, and the Organization of Industrial Research: Great Britain and the United States, 1900–1950 , 1984, Business History Review.

[47]  Patrick W. O'Bannon Waves of Change: Mechanization in the Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry, 1864-1914 , 1987 .

[48]  R. Seidel From Glow to Flow: A History of Military Laser Research and Development , 1987 .

[49]  Mark Rose Urban Environments and Technological Innovation: Energy Choices in Denver and Kansas City, 1900-1940 , 1984 .

[50]  C. Rosen Infrastructural Improvement in Nineteenth-Century Cities , 1986 .

[51]  C. Debresson,et al.  Forces of production : a social history of industrial automation , 1985 .

[52]  Steve Fraser Combined and Uneven Development in the Men's Clothing Industry , 1983, Business History Review.

[53]  P. W. Moore Public Services and Residential Development in a Toronto Neighborhood, 1880-1915 , 1983 .

[54]  Susan Leigh Star,et al.  Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice by H. M. Collins (review) , 1988, Technology and Culture.

[55]  Alfred D. Chandler Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise , 1962 .

[56]  David Cahan Werner Siemens and the Origin of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt, 1872-1887 , 1982 .

[57]  S. Stromquist Enginemen and Shopmen: Technological change and the organization of labor in an ERA of railroad expansion , 1983 .

[58]  S. Hacker,et al.  Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience , 1986 .

[59]  Maxine Berg,et al.  Most Wonderful Machine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making 1801-1885 , 1987 .

[60]  P. Frank,et al.  Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science , 1968 .

[61]  L. Winner The Whale and the Reactor , 2020 .

[62]  K. Lipartito The New York Cotton Exchange and the Development of the Cotton Futures Market , 1983, Business History Review.

[63]  Air Brakes for Freight Trains: Technological Innovation in the American Railroad Industry, 1869–1900 , 1984, Business History Review.

[64]  T. Pinch Confronting nature : the sociology of solar-neutrino detection , 1986 .

[65]  Isaac Cohen Workers’ control in the cotton industry: A comparative study of British and American mule spinning , 1985 .

[66]  Thomas A. Finholt,et al.  The City and the Telegraph , 1987 .

[67]  E. Arnesen To rule or ruin: New Orleans dock workers' struggle for control 1902–1903 , 1987 .

[68]  Morton Keller Business History and Legal History , 1979, Business History Review.

[69]  H. Kragh The Fine Structure of Hydrogen and the Gross Structure of the Physics Community, 1916-26 , 1985 .

[70]  Ruth Schwartz Cowan,et al.  More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave , 1985 .

[71]  William S. Pretzer “The British, Duff Green, the Rats and the Devil”: Custom, capitalism, and conflict in the Washington printing trade, 1834–36 , 1985 .

[72]  Donald MacKenzie,et al.  Marx and the Machine , 1984 .

[73]  Philip Scranton Milling about , 1984 .

[74]  Robert W. Seidel,et al.  Accelerating Science: The Postwar Transformation of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory , 1983 .

[75]  Bruce J. Hunt,et al.  The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900-1932 , 1985 .

[76]  S. Kostof America by Design , 1987 .

[77]  P. Pauly,et al.  Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology , 1988 .

[78]  Geof Bowker A Well Ordered Reality: Aspects of the Development of Schlumberger, 1920-39 , 1987 .

[79]  S Hoy,et al.  The garbage disposer, the public health, and the good life. , 1985, Technology and culture.

[80]  Michael P. Johnson Work, culture, and the slave community: Slave occupations in the cotton belt in 1860 , 1986 .

[81]  W. Walton “To Triumph before Feminine Taste”: Bourgeois Women's Consumption and Hand Methods of Production in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Paris , 1986, Business History Review.

[82]  M. N. Wise,et al.  Measurement, Work and Industry in Lord Kelvin's Britain , 1986 .

[83]  Irwin Yellowitz Skilled workers and mechanization: The Lasters in the 1890s , 1977 .

[84]  C. Shammas Black women's work and the evolution of plantation society in Virginia , 1985 .

[85]  Judith A. McGaw Accounting for Innovation: Technological Change and Business Practice in the Berkshire County Paper Industry , 1985 .

[86]  Fred W. Viehe Black Gold Suburbs , 1981 .

[87]  Alfred D. Chandler The Emergence of Managerial Capitalism , 1984, Business History Review.

[88]  L. Galambos Technology, Political Economy, and Professionalization: Central Themes of the Organizational Synthesis , 1983, Business History Review.

[89]  D. Newman Work and community life in a southern textile town , 1978 .

[90]  Joseph Agassi,et al.  Technology, Philosophical And Social Aspects , 1985 .

[91]  P. Kennedy The rise and fall of the great powers : economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000 , 1989 .

[92]  F. Carstensen,et al.  International Harvester in Russia: The Washington-St. Petersburg Connection? , 1983, Business History Review.

[93]  Merritt Roe Smith,et al.  Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change by Merritt Roe Smith (review) , 2023 .

[94]  David Montgomery,et al.  Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles , 1982 .

[95]  Paul Virilio,et al.  Speed and Politics , 1986 .

[96]  P. Philips,et al.  The Decline of the Piece-Rate System in California Canning: Technological Innovation, Labor Management, and Union Pressure, 1890–1947 , 1986, Business History Review.

[97]  Paul Theerman,et al.  The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918 by Stephen Kern (review) , 1984 .

[98]  G. Ovitt The Cultural Context of Western Technology: Early Christian Attitudes toward Manual Labor , 1986 .

[99]  C. Mcshane Transforming the Use of Urban Space: A Look at the Revolution in Street Pavements, 1880–1924 , 1979 .

[100]  Joseph T Rouse,et al.  Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science , 1987 .

[101]  T. P. Hughes The Seamless Web: Technology, Science, Etcetera, Etcetera , 1986 .

[102]  T. Lenoir,et al.  Models and instruments in the development of electrophysiology, 1845-1912. , 1986, Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences : HSPS.

[103]  Ernie Englander The inside contract system of production and organization: A neglected aspect of the history of the firm , 1987 .

[104]  R. Westrum The Social Construction of Technological Systems , 1989 .

[105]  A. Wallace,et al.  St. Claire: A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town's Experience with a Disaster-Prone Industry , 1987 .

[106]  P. Uselding Business History and the History of Technology , 1980, Business History Review.

[107]  M. Foster,et al.  City Planners and Urban Transportation , 1979 .

[108]  R. A. Buchanan,et al.  The Diaspora of British Engineering , 1986 .

[109]  J. Peterson Auto workers and their work, 1900–1933 , 1981 .

[110]  E. W. Stevens Labor and socialism in an Indiana mill town, 1905–1921 , 1985 .

[111]  Steven L. Piott The Chicago teamsters’ strike of 1902: A community confronts the beef trust , 1985 .

[112]  Grace Palladino When militancy isn't enough: The impact of automation on New York city building service workers, 1934–1970 , 1987 .

[113]  C. Mcshane,et al.  To engineer the metropolis: sewers, sanitation, and city planning in late-nineteenth-century America. , 1978, Journal of American history.

[114]  David R. Montgomery Gutman's nineteenth‐century America , 1978 .

[115]  Stuart Chase,et al.  Men and machines , 1929 .