FS II 93-104 Mikael Hard and Andreas Knie
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FS II 93-104 The Ruler of the Game: The Defining Power of the Standard Automobile Mikael Hard and Andreas Knie Berlin, Juli 1993 Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung, Reichpietschufer 50, D-10785 BERLIN. Tel. +49-30-25491-0. Abstract The basic structure of the present-day automobile was laid down in the early years of this century. An "automobile" was defined as a gasoline- driven, reliable race-car, able to cover great distances in a short period of time. Despite the emergence of other technical solutions and the development of new user contexts, its fundamental features remain. The strength—or the defining power—of this solution goes a long way toward explaining why it is so difficult for so-called alternative automobiles to establish themselves today. We have accommodated ourselves so much to the character and performance of the standard automobile that it has become both cognitively unthinkable and pragmatically undoable for other types of automobiles to get a foothold. The only "alternative" to the gasoline-powered automobile is the diesel—and this solution has become successful only because its features are very similar to those of the gasoline car. Zusammenfassung Die heutige Automobiltechnik hat ihren Ursprung im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert. Die konstruktiven Möglichkeiten, die fertigungstechnischen Voraussetzungen und vorherrschenden Nutzerbedürfnisse definierten um diese Zeit auch das technische Konzept "Automobil": eine auf vier Rädern montierte Zelle, angetrieben von einem bezinbetriebenen Hubkolben- Verbrennungsmotor, um mindestens vier Personen möglichst schnell und weit transportieren zu können. Obwohl sich die Umfeldbedingungen seit der Jahrhundertwende drastisch verändert haben, dominiert dieses Verständnis von "Automobil" auch heute noch. Die viel diskutierten "alternativen Antriebskonzepte" müßen sich heute nach dieser Maßgabe bewerten lassen. Es verwundert daher nicht, daß die einzige "Alternative", die bislang dauerhaft im Pkw- Antriebsbereich etabliert werden konnte, der Dieselmotor ist. Dessen Eigenschaften sind mit dem tradierten Verständnis von "Automobil" nämlich kompatibel, während andere Systeme diese beinahe 100 Jahre alten Vorgabe nicht erfüllen können. The crisis before us is largely cultural and perceptual; we may simply have to change our image of what a car looks like and does. (Nadis et al. 1993:91) 1. Introduction Closure and stabilization are two concepts which have been much discussed in recent works in the sociology and history of technology. Constructivist scholars in particular have observed in sharp opposition to traditional historians that technological development cannot be understood as a one-way trip on a freeway to heaven (Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch 1987; Bijker and Law 1992). They have emphasized that this process—after an initially messy stage where virtually everything is negotiable and unstable—rather tends to get locked-in and follow quite narrow corridors. This paper is an attempt to contribute to this discussion about closure and stabilization processes. We ask what kind of actors and factors foster closure and opening of stable areas of engineering. Why are technological fixes created, and how may they be avoided? Is technological closure a global phenomenon which allows no deviations? We focus on the history of the so-called "automobile." Like the whole system of automobility, this artifact has proven highly resistant to fundamental change. Heretic technicians, concerned politicians, and active social movements have been largely unable to affect the field but marginally. Why is this the case? We will try to show that the basic characteristics of the automobile were laid down rather early in its history, and that these features still define what we usually mean by the term "automobile." The gasoline-powered automobile became the pattern for future designs mainly because of its success as a trustworthy race car. Our 2 paper can be read as an elaboration of two sentences which James J. Flink (1970:243) wrote more than twenty years ago: Gasoline automobiles were by far the most successful in competitions such as reliability runs. Thus the public image of what the car that could be expected to perform well should look like was predominantly shaped by gasoline automobile designs. The automobile as we know it was created in the early years of this century, when it received a defining power that more or less automatically led to the disqualification of vehicles with other features. The basic characteristics of today's automobiles still incorporate conditions which prevailed at that time and thus represent—to paraphrase Max Weber (1958:320)—a kind of "frozen or congealed spirit." It was defined as a race vehicle able to cover large distances in short periods of time, and this definition prevails in the 1990's— although the user contexts of today are substantially different. Langdon Winner (1986) has argued that the low overpasses on Long Island Freeway embody an ideology that might have been acceptable by some groups in the 1950's in that they effectively cut off the lower classes from the recreational areas of the island. Similarly, we would like to argue that the automobile still carries with it ideals and solutions which are no longer in accordance with values held by many people of today. However, this does not mean that the system of automobility is impossible to affect. A fresh start may be made, but only if the concepts of "automobile" and "automobility" are challenged at root. Needless to say, such an endeavor will be both difficult and painful. The concept of defining power is here meant to bring out the imperative strength that is or has been given to an artifact or technological system by one or more groups of actors. Their influence is or has been so large that their particular view of what functions a certain technology should perform and how it should be designed marginalizes all other views. We agree with Trevor Pinch's and Wiebe Bijker's (1987) assertion that, epistemologically speaking, a material object can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. We suppose that this "interpretative flexibility" is, socially and culturally speaking, relatively large when an area of technology is in flux. As soon as closure has established itself, however, the "winning" solution and the features it 3 incorporates come to define what attributes are going to be regarded as legitimate. It becomes a convention that this solution should be taken as the point of departure for subsequent developments. Maybe it be could said that the solution around which closure has been achieved receives an interpretative advantage. By definition, non-conventional solutions become suspect, strange, and maybe even stupid. 2. What is an "Automobile?" Figure 1. A standard, gasoline-powered automobile; from The Oxford-Duden Pictorial English Dictionary (1981:330). If you happen not to know what an "automobile" (Br. "motor car") looks like, please analyze Figure 1 closely. An automobile apparently consists of, among other things, four wheels (14) mounted on a chassis (2), a unitary body (1) with doors (4) and windows (21, 22,32), seats (31, 34,36), a steering wheel (37), and a trunk (24). If you dare open the hood (8), then you are most likely to find a water-cooled, gasoline- driven, four-stroke, Otto-cycle internal-combustion engine with four or more cylinders. In case you are still not sure that you will be able to recognize an automobile after having read this paper and made your way out into the street, please compare the other varieties presented in Figure 2. 4 © Figure 2. A variety of automobiles; from The Oxford-Duden Pictorial English Dictionary (1981:335). If you would like to know what an automobile does not look like, please pay attention to Figure 3. This is a "horseless carriage," which has no hood and no windows. Its engine is driven by gasoline and runs in accordance with the Otto cycle, but has only one cylinder and is placed in the middle of the vehicle. It clearly resembles the "horse-drawn carriages" in Figure 4 more than the "automobiles" in Figure 2. 5 Figure 3. A Daimler horseless carriage from 1886; from Georgano (1985:10). The number of horseless carriages slowly decreased at the turn of the twentieth century, and more and more automobiles were to be found in the streets of Europe and North America. A typical automobile from this time is shown in Figure 5. Virtually all of the characteristics which we mentioned above can be found here: four wheels, front-mounted, gasoline, Otto engine, and so on. The term "Automobil" replaced the indigenous term "Selbstfahrer” in Germany, and the short word "bil" established itself in the Scandinavian languages in the first decade of this century. Its connotation has remained. 6 Figure 4. Various horse-drawn carriages; from The Oxford-Duden Pictorial English Dictionary (1981:321). Figure 5. A Daimler Phoenix from 1899; from Georgano (1985:40). 7 In line with this argument, the Viking 21 hybrid vehicle depicted in Figure 6 is no "automobile" either. It lacks several of the characteristics which we normally attribute to automobiles; its maximum speed, for instance, is only just over 50 m.p.h. What we would like to suggest is that one reason for the difficulties that so-called alternative motor vehicles encounter is that they are not able to supply their users with familiar functions (maybe futuristic designs are thus counterproductive). The automobile has been a stable artifact for almost ninety years. However, not only the artifact itself was closed a long time ago. The production structure, the technological support network (Staudenmaier 1985:Ch. 4), and the main elements of the surrounding infrastructure have also been upheld from the time shortly after World War One. Certain user behavior and user expectations have also followed in the wake of these closed structures. Both the artifact and its cultural ambience (ibid.) have been frozen.