Shaped by the very instruments with which we try to shape the world, human ingenuity may be redefining who we are.

Mechanization takes Command

material & spiritual changes in society

1800-1980
* * * * * * * *

“Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.”

Thomas Carlyle (1829)

“By 1844 the machine had captured the public imagination. The invention of the steamboat had been exciting, but it was nothing compared to the railroad. A national obsession.... The entire relation between man and nature is being transformed.”

( p. 195, Machine in the Garden )

Mechanization began in the 900s and morphed into industrialism in 1700s.

Do tools as they are used and their associated tool complexes possess their own politics?

Two possible, yes, answers:

• 1, that tool complexes exert power due to their order and the skills exhibited in the techniques used by mechanics to service maintain and apply the tools.
• 2, that tools as expressions of science, experimentation or investment possess the capacity to reorganize life, create new needs and redefine what we mean by resources and waste.

By politics, I do not mean the accompanying political order in which tool complexes are exploited, such as railroad empires.

That is because with the coming of the industrial revolution there emerged a move away from monarchy and oligarchic order to a more commercial and dispersed idea of power sharing.

1800 -1859

Liberty -

The French group of thinkers called Physiocrats argued that land was the basis of all wealth and thus that its ownership was a means of altering power among societies competing members. See property.

The ideal of laissez faire - [to allow to make or do] allowance to make products emerged from the success of the French Revolution to replace the older monopolistic traditions of mercantilism.

The idea of Utility, Utilitarianism,

Other competing ideologies emerged with respect to the control needed to "tame" the machinery that was reorganizing labor. These concepts were:

syndicalism, anarchism and Socialism

British textile manufacturing, changed family labor and the venue or locus of productive work became focused in industrial factories, as opposed to the home.

Eli Whitney & the myth of production:
the use of standardized, interchangeable parts, in a particular sequence.

• Mechanization due to steam power 1713-1776 in:
  factories & farms, increased the demand for minerals - timber - water & fuel
  creates new connections among mechanics, consumers, resources, ideas
• Manus - hand labor is replaced in manufacturing by machinery, mechanics and mechanical labor
• Innovations in textiles, construction, & printing affect the home, the extended family, and created a new ideal of the nuclear family that became a model for society.

Industrialization -- coke process for coal, iron production, textiles, railways, electromagnetic induction, telegraph, lights (1879), automobile (1885).

Vocabulary
alienation -- control devices -- repairmen -- trouble shooting -- unintended consequences -- design flaws -- manufacturing errors -- planned obsolescence --

Are people like resources, like parts in a machine, or something else?

Pacey 9: Railroad empires race across Asia
Kranzberg: The Discipline of the Machine
15 The Mass Production Farm 4 field system & machinery in the garden
Pursell
8 J. B. Eades: engineer & entrepreneur

wealth produced by war machinery

This is the sculpture commemorating the spot at the University of Chicago where the first nuclear chain reaction occurred on the December 2, 1942.

Reflection: What beliefs or biases lie behind our principles?

American Technology:an

from thrift to conspicuous consumption

from performance to privilege
Textile manufacture & family values
Railroad & Steamship networks alter time
Iron & Steel making change matter & space

Industrialization:

production & efficiency
Populism vs. Progressivism
from whale oil to kerosene (petroleum)
Blast furnaces, standardized screws, & copper wiring

Political parties that embraced technological reforms

• Abolitionists - opposed to slavery
• Workingmen's or labor party - eight hour day
• Free Soil Party was opposed to slavery in the west

Social behavior and class order was altered by industrial organization:

• means of production as opposed to material wealth
• Labor vs. Capital
• craft vs. industrial unionism
  

Imagery
the Virgin & the Dynamo

How did automation arise?
confusion & control

sugar mill, the West Indies

• steam engines (1770s)
  
• Railways (1830s)
  
• telegraph (1840) &
• telephone (1880)
  
• census (1880) & punch cards
  
• electrical induction, dynamo (1880)
  
• bicycles (1800s)
• to airplanes (1905)
  
• radio, radium, & radioactivity (1890s)

Each of these inventions or discoveries and subsequent patents created a suite of techniques and implements that were linked by electricity and control devices.

One unexpected outcome of automation was to reinforce a trend inherent in the Middle Ages, but more pronounced as the pace of change quickened due to transportation and communication's technology.

Misplaced sentimentality:

origins of postmodern culture lie in the separation of the image from the facts that began to be accelerated by the graphic revolution

inventions: automobiles, kinetescopes, & vacuum tubes
service work: marketing - maintenance - insurance
advertising, imagery, industrial psychology

horsepower	internal combustion engine model

reification - to make real what is fictional
nihilism - absence of meaningful or constructive drives
narcissism - confusion of the self-image with others

Fine technology as the origin of mechanization and automation.

Automatons & Automation

issue of control & problem of performance
17th century --- 1950-80
iron & coal --- silicon
mines --- manufacture
flooding --- electronics
pumps --- cybernetics

“the drive for power” & the power elite

power to persuade
dominate
control
hegemony

postmodern, secular influences:

social political technical
USA European parliament Japanese
Origins of Mechanization reveal the origins of the illusion we persist in believing about progress, technological advance, and material well-being.

Modern, religious influences:

social	political	technical
schools & orphanages	diocese for order	pipe organs
printed bibles	no tax on land	clock for prayer

• hospitals & schools parishes
• art of perspective
• philanthropy neighborhoods
• scientific ideas

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Pursell | Pacey | Postman | Kaku

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Course overview and Techological Complexes

• A timeline of crucial technologies, tools and inventions
  
• Automated technology shapes our expectations
  
• Chronological Periods of tool use
• History of Technology course Described
  
• Introduction to technology and keystone tool complexes
  
• Kranzberg's Laws of technology
  
• Pacey's three planes or dimensions of tool use
  
• Political influences of inventions and tool complexes
• Power of Technology
• Technology alters our values!
  
• Technology defined
• Time and the relation of clocks to tool
• Final Exam

	Tulips as tools?
	Tools of Toil: what to read.
	Tools are historical building blocks of technology.
Technology can be understood if tools have three facets.
Tools used in both Music and Architecture led to mechanization and automation.
Tools and the study of technology require us to reflect on the power of instruments,

The Syllabus | Technology class calendar | readings | Timeline