"": The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept Author(s): LEO MARX Source: Social Research, Vol. 64, No. 3, Technology and the rest of culture (FALL 1997), pp. 965-988 Published by: The New School Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40971194 . Accessed: 28/06/2014 18:55

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This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Technology:The / Emergenceof a / Hazardous / Concept* / BY LEO MARX

"... the essenceof technologyis by no meansanything technological." - Heideggeri

New Conceptsas HistoricalMarkers

X he historyof technologyis one of those subjectsthat most of us knowmore about thanwe realize. Long beforethe universities recognizedit as a specialized fieldof scholarlyinquiry, American public schools were routinelydisseminating a sketchyoutline of thathistory to a large segmentof the population. They taughtus aboutJames Watt and the steam engine, Eli Whitneyand the cot- ton gin,and about othergreat inventors and theirinventions, but more important,they led us to believe thattechnological innova- tion is a - probably the- major drivingforce of human history. The theme was omnipresentin mychildhood experience. I met it in the graphiccharts and illustrationsin mycopy of TheBook of Knowledge,a children's encyclopedia, and in the alluringdioramas of earlyMan in the New YorkMuseum of Natural History.These

* An earlyversion of thisessay was the Richmond Lecture at WilliamsCollege, Sep- tember26, 1996. I am gratefulto RobertDalzell, Michael Fischer, Michael Gilmore, RebeccaHerzig, Carl Kaysen,Kenneth Keniston, Lucy Marx, David Mindell,George O'Har,Harriet Ritvo, Merritt Roe Smith,Judith Spitzer, and G.R.Stange for their helpful commentsand criticism.

SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Fall 1997)

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 966 SOCIAL RESEARCH exhibitsdisplayed the linear advance of humanityas a series of transformations,chiefly represented by particularinventions - fromprimitive tools to complex machines- by means of which Homo sapiens acquired its unique power over nature.This com- fortingtheme remainspopular today,and it insinuatesitself into everykind of historicalnarrative. Here, forexample, is a passage froma recent anthropologicalstudy of apes and the originsof human violence:

Our ownancestors from this line [ofwoodland apes] beganshap- ing stone tools and relyingmuch more consistentlyon meat around2 millionyears ago. Theytamed fire perhaps 1.5 million yearsago. Theydeveloped human language at some unknown latertime, perhaps 150,000 years ago. Theyinvented agriculture 10,000years ago. Theymade gunpowder around 1,000 years ago, and motorvehicles a centuryago (Wranghamand Peterson, 1996,p. 61).

This capsule historyof human developmentfrom stone tools to Ford cars illustratesthe shared "scientific"understanding, circa 1997, of the historyof technology.But one arrestingif infre- quentlynoted aspect of thisfamiliar account is the belated emer- - gence of the word used to name the veryrubric the kind of thing- thatallegedly drives our history:technology. The factis that duringall but the verylast fewseconds, as it were,of the ten mil- lennia of recorded human historyencapsulated in this passage, the concept of technology- in our sense of its meaning- did not exist.The word,based on the Greekroot, techne (meaning, or per- tainingto, art, craft)originally came into English in the seven- teenth century,but it then referred to a kind of learning, discourse,or treatise,concerned withthe mechanic arts.At the timeof the IndustrialRevolution, and throughmost of the nine- teenthcentury, the word technologyprimarily referred to a kind of book; exceptfor a fewlexical pioneers,it was not untilthe turnof this century that sophisticatedwriters like Thorstein Veblen began to use theword to mean the mechanic artscollectively. But that sense of the word did not gain wide currencyuntil after

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WorldWar I.2 (It is curiousthat manyhumanist scholars - I includemyself - haveso casuallyprojected the idea backinto the past,and intocultures, in whichit was unknown.) The factis that thiskey word - designatorof a pivotalconcept in contemporary discourse- is itselfa surprisinglyrecent innovation. Whydoes thatmatter? From a culturalhistorian's viewpoint, the emergenceof such a crucialterm - whethera newlycoined wordor an old wordinvested with radically new meaning - often is a markerof far-reachingdevelopments in societyand culture. Recall,for example, Tocqueville's tacit admission, in Democracyin America,that he could not do justiceto his subjectwithout coin- ingthe strange new term "individualism" (Tocqueville, 1946, II, p. 98); or RaymondWilliams, who famouslydiscovered, in writing Cultureand Society,a curious interdependence, indeterminacy, or reflexivityin the relationbetween concurrent changes in lan- guageand in society.Williams had set out to examinethe trans- formationof culture coincidentwith the rise of industrial capitalismin Britain,but he foundthat the word culture itself, like suchother key words as class,industry, democracy, art,had acquired itsmeanings in responseto thevery changes he proposedto ana- lyze.It wasnot simply that the word culture had been influenced bythose changes, but that its meaning had in largemeasure been entangled with- and in some degree generated by- them (Williams,1983, pp. xiii-xviii).A recognitionof this circular process to accountfor the - and the - of helps origin ' significance technologyas a historicalmarker. But how do we identifythe changesin societyand culture markedby the emergenceof technology?I assume that those changesin effectcreated a semanticvoid, that is, a setof social cir- cumstancesfor which no adequate conceptwas yet available - a void thatthe new concept,technology, eventually would fill.It wouldprove to be a moreadequate, apt referentfor those novel circumstancesthan its immediate precursors - words like machine, invention,improvement, and, above all, the rulingconcept of the mechanic(or usefulor practicalor industrial)arts. In a seminalessay

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 968 SOCIAL RESEARCH of 1829, had announced that the appropriate name forthe emergingera was "The Age of Machinery"(Carlyle, 1829). But laterin the century,machinery evidently came to seem inadequate, and the need fora more apt termevidently was felt. The obviousquestions, then, are: Whywas therea semanticvoid? Which new developmentscreated it? What meaningswas technolo- gybetter able to conveythan its precursors?In tryingto answer these questions,I also propose to assess the relativemerits and limitationsof the concept of technology. As for the hazardouscharacter of the concept, at this point I need onlysay thatthe alleged hazard is discursive,not physical.I am not thinkingabout weaponry,nor am I thinkingabout the destructiveuses of othertechnologies; rather, I have in mind haz- ards inherentin, or encouraged by,the concept itself- especially when the singular noun (technology)is the subject of an active verb, and thus by implicationan autor omous agent capable of determiningthe course of events,as we constantlyhear in count- less variantsof the archetypalsentence: "Technologyis changing the waywe live."When used in thisway, I submit,the concept of technologybecomes hazardous to the moral and politicalcogency - of our thought.My argument,let me add, should not if suffi- cientlyclear - providecomfort to eitherthe ludditesor the tech- nocrats.On the contrary,my hope is thatit mayhelp to end the banal, increasinglyfutile debate between these two dogmatic, seeminglyirrepressible parties.

The MechanicArts and theChanging Ideology of Progress By the 1840s, some of the changes that contributedto the emergenceof the concept of technologywere becoming apparent. They may be divided into two large categories,ideological and substantive:first, changes in the prevailing ideas about the mechanic arts, and second, changes in the organizationaland materialmatrix of the mechanic arts.3As a referencepoint for both kinds of change, here is the peroration of a ceremonial speech deliveredby Senator Daniel Websterat the opening of a

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TECHNOLOGY: A HAZARDOUS CONCEPT 969 new section of the NorthernRailroad in Lebanon, New Hamp- shire,on November17, 1847:

It is an extraordinaryera in whichwe live.It is altogethernew. The worldhas seen nothinglike it before.I willnot pretend, no one can pretend,to discernthe end; but everybody knows that theage is remarkablefor scientific research into the heavens, the earth,and whatis beneaththe earth; and perhapsmore remark- able stillfor the application of thisscientific research to thepur- suitsof life.The ancientssaw nothing like it. The modernshave seen nothinglike it tillthe presentgeneration. . . . We see the ocean navigatedand thesolid land traversed by steam power, and intelligencecommunicated by electricity.Truly this is almosta miraculousera. What is beforeus no one can say,what is upon us no one can hardlyrealize. The progressof the age hasalmost out- strippedhuman belief; the future is knownonly to Omniscience.4

The firstideological development that the word technology would eventuallyratify, as indicated by Webster'sexemplary dis- playof the "rhetoricof the technologicalsublime," has to do with the perceived relation between innovations in science, the mechanic arts,and the prevailingbelief in progress.5When Web- ster depicts the railroad as epitomizing- indeed, as constituting in itself- the progressof the age, he is confirminga subtlemodi- fication of the earlier Enlightenmentconcept of historyas a record of progress. Of course the idea of progresshad been closelybound up, from itsinception, with the acceleratingrate of scientificand mechan- ical innovation.To call progress"an idea," incidentally,as if it were merelyone idea among many,is to belittleit. By the timeof Webster's speech, it had become the fulcrum of an all- encompassing secular world view,and, in a sense, modernity's nearestsecular equivalentof the creationmyths that embody the belief systemsof premodern cultures. In the context of the seventeenth-centuryscientific revolution, the word progresshad served, in a straightforwardliteral sense, to signifya series of incrementaladvances, withinclearly bounded enterpriseswith

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 970 SOCIAL RESEARCH specificgoals, such as the developmentof the microscopeor tele- scope. But later,in the era of the Americanand French revolu- tions,so manyexamples of thisonce clearlydefined and bounded kind of progresshad become manifestthat the word's meaning was extended to the entire- boundless- course of human events. Historyitself was redefinedas a record of the steady,cumulative, continuousexpansion of human knowledgeof, and power over, nature- knowledgeand power thatmight be expected to result in a universalimprovement in the conditionsof human life. But the republican thinkerswho led the way in framingthis "masternarrative" of progress- men like Condorcet and Turgot, Paine and Priestley,Franklin and Jefferson- did not,like Webster, equate progresswith innovations in the mechanic arts.They were radical republicans,political revolutionists,and although they celebrated innovations in the mechanic arts, they celebrated themnot as constitutingprogress in themselves,but ratheras the means of attainingit; to themthe truemeasure of progresswas to be humanity'sforthcoming liberation from aristocratic, ecclesias- tical,and monarchicoppression, and the establishmentof more just, peaceful societies based on the consent of the governed. What requiresemphasis here is theirstrong conviction about the relationshipbetween the artsand the restof societyand culture. To them,advances in science and the mechanic artswere chiefly importantas a meansof arrivingat social and politicalends.6 By Webster'stime, however,that distinctionalready had lost most of its force.This was partlydue to the presumedsuccess of the republican revolutions,and to the complacent conservatism induced by the rapid growthof the immenselyproductive and lucrativecapitalist system of manufactures.Thus SenatorWebster, whose most importantconstituents were factoryowners, mer- chants,and financiers,did not thinkof the railroad as merely instrumental- merelya means of achievingsocial and political progress.He identifiedhis own interestswith the companydirec- torsand stockholderswho enjoyedthe profits,and in his viewthe railroad exemplified a socially transformativepower of such

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- immensescope and promise21s to be a virtualembodiment the perfecticon - of progress. The new entrepreneurialelite for whom Websterspoke was thusrelieved of its presumed obligationto fulfillthe old republi- - can politicalmandate. Although the Boston Associates the mer- chants who launched the Lowell textile industry- were concerned about the social and political effectsof their new industrialventure, they chieflyexpressed their sense of social obligationby acts of privatephilanthropy (Dalzell, 1987). Innova- tions in the mechanic arts could be relied upon, in the longer term,to issue in progressand prosperityfor all. A distinctivefea- ture of the new mechanic arts,moreover, was theirtangibility - theiromnipresence as physical,visible, sensibly accessible objects. Thus new factoriesand machinesmight be expected,in the ordi- narycourse of theiroperations, to automaticallydisseminate the belief in progressto all levels of the population. As acutelyobserved, the mere sightof a potentmachine like the railroad in the landscape wordlesslyinculcated the notion that the presentis an improvementon the past,and thatthe wondrous futureis imaginable, as Websterput it, "only to Omniscience" (Mill, 1865, II, p. 148). But in the 1840s this blurring of the distinctionbetween mechanical means and political ends also provokedardent criti- cism. It was denounced by a vocal minorityof dissidentintellec- tuals as a sign of moral negligence and politicalregression. Thus HenryThoreau, who was conductinghis experimentat the pond in 1847, the yearWebster gave his speech, writesin Waiden:

Thereis an illusionabout . . . [modernimprovements]; there is notalways a positiveadvance. . . . Our inventionsare wontto be prettytoys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are butimproved means to an unimprovedend (Thoreau,1950, p. 46).

And in Moby-Dick,Herman Melville,after paying tribute to Cap- tainAhab's naturalintellect and his masteryof the artof whaling,

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 972 SOCIAL RESEARCH has him acknowledgethe hazardous mismatchbetween his tech- nical proficiencyand his irrationalpurpose: "Now,in his heart, Ahab had some glimpseof this,namely, all mymeans are sane, my motiveand myobject mad" (Melville,1967, p. 161). This criticalview of the new industrialarts marked the rise of an adversaryculture that would reject the dominantfaith in the advance of the mechanic arts as a selfjustifyingsocial goal. Indeed, a directline of influenceis traceablefrom the intellectu- al dissidents of the 1840s to the widespread 1960s rebellion against established institutions- from,for example, Thoreau's recommendation,in "Civil Disobedience" (1849); to "Let your lifebe a counter-frictionto stop the machine" (Thoreau, 1950, p. 644); to Mario Savio's 1964 exhortationto Berkeleystudents: 'You've got to put yourbodies upon the [machine] and make it stop!" (Lipset and Wolin, 1965, p. 163). From its inception,the counterculturai movement of the 1960s was seen- and saw itself- as a revoltagainst an increasingly"technocratic society."7

The Constructionof ComplexSociotechnological Systems I turnnow to the substantivechanges in the materialcharacter and organizationalmatrix of the mechanic artsthat also helped to create the void to be filledby the new concept of technology.In Webster'sview, these changes were embodied in the new machine itself- the railroad as a materialand social artifact.Early in the industrialrevolution innovations in the mechanic artshad been typifiedby single, freestanding,more or less self-contained mechanical inventions:the spinningjenny, the power loom, the steam engine, the steamboat,the locomotive,the dynamo,or, in a word, machines. By Webster's time, however, the discrete machine was replaced, as the typicalembodiment of the new power,by a new kind of sociotechnologicalsystem. The railroad was one of the earliest,most visible of these large-scale,complex systemsin the modern era.8 A novel featureof these systemsis - thatthe crucial physical-artifactual,or mechanical component

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TECHNOLOGY: A HAZARDOUS CONCEPT 973 thesteam locomotive, for example - constitutesa relatively small partof the whole. Thus,in additionto the engineitself, the operationof a rail- road required:(1) variouskinds of ancillaryequipment (rolling stock,stations, yards, bridges, tunnels, viaducts, signal systems, and a hugenetwork of tracks); (2) a corporatebusiness organiza- tionwith a largecapital investment; (3) specializedforms of tech- nical knowledge (railroad engineering,telegraphy); (4) a speciallytrained work force with unique railroading skills, includ- ingcivil and locomotiveengineers, firemen, telegraphers, brake- men,conductors - a workforce large and resourcefulenough to keep thesystem going day and night,in all kindsof weather, 365 daysa year;and (5) variousfacilitating institutional changes, such as lawsestablishing standardized track gauges and a nationalsys- temof standardized time zones. Eventuallythese large, tightly organized yet amorphous net- works- likethe telegraph and wirelesssystems, the electric power and use system,and so on- led to the replacementof the tradi- tionalfamily (father and sons) firmby the corporationas the dominantAmerican form of businessorganization, and to the emergenceof a newkind of professionalor (as it laterwould be called in the UnitedStates) "scientific" management (Bijker et al., 1987,pp. 51-82; Chandler,1977, pp. 79-120). A prominent featureof these complex, messy, ad hoc systemsis thelack of clear boundarylines between their constituent elements. Of central sig- nificancehere is theblurring of the boundary between the mate- rial-artifactualcomponent (the mechanical equipment or hardware)and therest: the cognitive, technical, or scientificcom- ponents;the hierarchicallyorganized work force; the financial apparatus;and themethod of obtaining raw materials. Anotherdevelopment that contributed to thecomplexity, scale, and singularityof the new systemswas the increasingconver- gence,in thenineteenth century, of scientific knowledge and the mechanicarts. Webster had alluded to electricityand the tele- graph,and had linkedthe adventof the railroadto "scientific

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 974 SOCIAL RESEARCH research into the heavens, the earth, and what is beneath the earth."The factis that the building of the railroadsdid mark a new departurein thisrespect. Whereas most earlier innovations of the industrialrevolution had been made bypractical, mechan- ically adept, rule-of-thumbtinkerers with little or no scientific education, a number of West Point-trainedmilitary engineers brought a more formal kind of technical education, in part derived from the Ecole Polytechnique,to the building of the Americanrailroads (hence the emergenceof civilengineering, to distinguishthe civilianfrom the militarybranches of the profes- sion).9 By 1847, thejoining of science and the practicalarts was under way,but it was not until the end of the century,with the growthof the electricaland chemical industries,that the large- scale amalgamationof science and industryhelped to call forth the concept of a new realm of innovationand transformative power- a new entity- called technology(Noble, 1977). As earlyas 1828, to be sure, the prospectof amalgamatingsci- ence and industryalready had elicitedan explicitstatement - evi- dentlythe firstever made- about the need forthat new concept. In a seriesof lecturesat Harvardentitled "The Elementsof Tech- nology,"Jacob Bigelow,a Boston botanistand physician,put the case thisway:

There has probably never been an age in which the practical applicationsof science have employedso large a portionof talent and enterprise... as in the present.To embody . . . the various . . . [aspects] of such an undertaking,/ have adoptedthe general nameof Technology,a word sufficiently expressive, which is found in someof the older dictionaries, and is beginningto be revived in thelitera- tureof practical men at thepresent day. Under this title ... [I will attempt]to include ... the principles,processes, and nomencla- tures of the more conspicuous arts, particularlythose which involveapplications of science,and whichmay be considereduse- ful,by promoting the benefitof society,together with the emolu- mentof thosewho pursue them.10

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But Bigelowwas farahead of his time.The concept of technolo- gydid not gain currencyin the intellectualworld for almost a cen- tury.His greatestsuccess in disseminatingthe new termprobably was its precocious use in naming a new institutionof learning- The MassachusettsInstitute of Technology- in 1862. (He also became a trusteeof MIT.) But even at the mid-century,few writ- ers availed themselvesof the term. and Arnold Toyn- bee (a forebearof the twentieth-centuryhistorian), both ofwhom wroteextensively about the changes effectedby the new machine power,seldom ifever used it. As late as the first(1867) edition of Capital,where Marx's subject- the way"machinery . . . formsnew systemsof manifoldmachines" - criesout forthe new concept,he relied on termslike factory mechanism, and other relicsof the old mechanisticlexicon (Marx, Karl, 1978). At points in Toynbee's influentiallectures on the IndustrialRevolution, composed in 1880-81, where technologywould have been apposite, he also relied on conventional older terms like mechanicaldiscoveries, improvements,or inventions.11 Earlyin the twentiethcentury the avant-gardeof the modernist movementin the arts,with its several technology-affirmingsub- movements- including the vogue of "Machine Art" and of machine-likestyles in Futurism,Precisionism, Constructivism, Cubism, and the InternationalStyle in architecture- helped to elevate motifsformerly treated as merely instrumentalto the plane of intrinsic(verging on ultimate) aestheticvalue. In the Bauhaus aesthetic,design was married to industry.Indeed, the entire modernist turn to Mondrian-likeabstraction - the new respectaccorded to novel geometric,rectilinear, nonrepresenta- tional styles- comportedwith the markedlyabstract, mathemati- cal, cerebral, practical, artificial (that is, not "organic" or "natural")connotations of the emergingconcept, technology. But the word itselfdid not gain trulypopular currencyuntil well afterthe astonishingexplosion of inventionsin the decades (roughly 1880-1920) bracketingthe turn of the century.That decisive period, sometimescalled the Second IndustrialRévolu-

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 976 SOCIAL RESEARCH tion,marked the adventof electriclight and power,the automo- bile, the radio, the telephone, the airplane,and the movingpic- ture. As compared with the innovationsof the firstindustrial revolution,these inventionswere markedby theirrelative cleanli- ness, and by theirdependence on advances in science. Each of theseartifacts eventually formed the materialcore of a large,com- plex sociotechnologicalsystem. Each also was sufficientlyimpres- sivefor inclusion in the iconologyof progress.Of all the enduring testimonialsto the dynamismof thatera, none conveyeda more vividsense of the acceleratingrate of change keyedto new inven- tions than TheEducation of Henry Adams (first published privately in 1907). Adams announced the appearance of a new American, "born since 1900,"who was

the child of incalculablecoal-power, chemical power, electric power,and radiatingenergy, as wellas newforces yet undeter- mined- [and who] mustbe a sortof God comparedwith any otherformer creation of nature.At the rateof progresssince 1800,every American who lived to theyear 2000 would know how to controlunlimited power. He would thinkin complexities unimaginableto an earliermind (Adams, 1973, pp. 496-97).

Adams rarelyif ever used the termtechnology, and in retrospect - indeed his preferred vocabulary- energy,power, forces often seems more vividand evocative,more effectiverhetorically, than the new term.But in spite of- or perhaps because of- its lack of connotativeresonance, technologybegan to take hold of the imag- ination of writersin the earlyyears of the new century.By 1904, ThorsteinVeblen, who perhaps did more than any of his con- temporariesto popularize the idea of technologyand its unique transformativepower, asserted that "The factorin the modern sit- uation thatis alien to the ancientregime is the machine technol- ogy,with its many and wide ramifications."He contended thatthis radicallyinnovative mode of making and doing would literally transformthe mentalprocesses of thosewho used it.

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The machine compels a more or less unremittingattention to phenomena of an impersonal character and to sequences and correlationsnot dependent fortheir force upon human predilec- tion nor created by habit or custom. The machine throwsout anthropomorphichabits of thought.It compels the adaptationof the workmanto his work,rather than the adaptation of the work to the workman.. . . [It] givesno insightinto questions of good and evil,merit and demerit The machine technologytakes no cognizance of ... rules of precedence; ... it can make no use of any of the attributesof worth.Its scheme of knowledge ... is based on the lawsof materialcausation, not on those of immemo- rial custom, authenticity,or authoritativeenactment. Its meta- physicalbasis is the law of cause and effect,which in the thinking of its adepts has displaced even the law of sufficientreason (Veblen, 1932, pp. 303, 310-11).

Veblen, along with Frederick Winslow Taylor and Howard Scott- who led the TechnocracyMovement of the 1930s- also helped to popularize the seductiveidea, foreshadowedin Web- ster's1847 speech, thatthe miraculousimprovements in the con- ditionsof life made possible by technologymight enable society to dispense withpolitics as its primarymeans of directingsocial change. This line of thoughtmay be said to have culminatedin the "liberalconsensus" of the Kennedyera, when enthusiasmfor the power of technologyto replace politicsbecame the quasioffi- cial doctrineof the administration;it was accompanied by confi- dent academic predictionsof the forthcoming"end of ideology."

TechnologyFills the Void At the outset I suggested that Daniel Webster's1847 speech pointsto the existenceof a conceptual void thatwould eventual- lybe filledby the idea of technology.What was missing,from an ide- ological standpoint,was the concept of a form of power- of progress- thatfar exceeded, in degree,scope, and scale, the rel- ativelylimited capacity of the merelyuseful (or mechanicor practi- cal or industrial)arts to generatesocial change. What was needed was a concept that did not merelysignify, like the useful arts,a

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 978 SOCIAL RESEARCH means of achievingprogress, but ratherone thatsignified a dis- crete entitythat, in itself,virtually constituted progress. Besides, the idea of utilityhad long borne the stamp of vulgarity.Ever since antiquity,the useful arts in theirvarious guises, had been regardedas intellectuallyand sociallyinferior to the high(or fine, creative,or imaginative)arts. The concept of the usefularts and its variantsimplied, if only because it explicitlydesignated a subor- dinate branch of the all-inclusiveentity, the arts,a limited and limitingcategory. Indeed, the distinctionbetween the usefuland the fine arts had served to ratifya set of invidiousdistinctions betweenthings and ideas, the physicaland the mental,the mun- dane and the ideal, body and soul, femaleand male, makingand thinking,the work of enslavedmen and thatof freemen. Byasso- ciating the railroad withscience, business,and wealth,Webster and his contemporariescreated the need for a termthat would erase this derogatorylegacy and elevate the useful to a higher intellectualand social plane. All of these ideological purposes,and more,were servedby the relativelyabstract, indeterminate,neutral, synthetic-sounding termtechnology. Whereas the mechanicarts called to mind men with soiled hands tinkeringat workbenches,technology conjures up images of clean, well-educated,white male techniciansin control booths gazing at dials, instrumentpanels, or computermonitors. And whereas the mechanic artswere thoughtof as belonging to the mundane world of everydaywork, physicality,and practi- - cality- of humdrumhandicrafts and artisanalskills technologyis identifiedwith the more elevatedsocial and intellectualrealm of the university.This abstractword, with its vivid blankness, its lack of a specificartifactual, tangible, sensuous referent,its aura of sanitized,bloodless cerebrationand precision,helped to ease the introductionof the practicalarts - especiallythe new engineering profession- into the precinctsof the higherlearning. Turningto the otherhalf of the conceptualvoid, what was miss- ing,from an organizationaland materialstandpoint, was a name forthe novel entity- a distinctnew kind of sociotechnicalforma-

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TECHNOLOGY: A HAZARDOUS CONCEPT 979 don- whichemerged in thenineteenth century. This newentity hasbeen called"a large-scaletechnological system," but that term begs an importantquestion: Which aspect is technological? Where,exactly, is the technology}To be sure,the indispensable materialcomponent of these formations invariably is a distinctive materialdevice, a piece of equipmentdesigned to facilitatepro- duction,transportation, communication, or forthat matter any formof human making or doing.But as we haveseen, over time thatpivotal artifactual component had come to constitutean increasinglyminute part of the whole.Think of the computer chip! Althoughin commonparlance nowadays this material aspect oftenis whatthe concept of technologytacitly refers to, such a lim- itedmeaning - as we sawin the case of the railroad- is ambigu- ous and misleading.It is ambiguousbecause, for one thing,the artifactualcomponent only constitutes a part of the whole system, yetthe rest is so inclusive,so various,and itsboundaries so vague, thatit resistsbeing clearly designated. This ambiguitysurely is a largepart of what Heidegger had in mindwhen he enigmatically assertedthat "the essence of technologyis byno meansanything technological,"and it also goes,as we shallsee, to myassertion thattechnology, as the conceptis used in publicdiscourse nowa- days,is hazardous.For in the majorcontemporary thematerial component - technologynarrowly conceived as a phys- ical device- is merelyone partof a complexsocial and institu- tionalmatrix. In capitalistsocieties that matrix typically takes the formof a privatecorporation, bank, or publicutility with a large capitalinvestment. (It is of course relevantthat the concept emergedat theend ofthe era characterizedby what Alan Tracht- enberghas called"the incorporation of America" [Trachtenberg, 1982]). Butthese large technological systems also maybe embed- ded in otherkinds of macroinstitution, for example, branches of government,such as the militaryor the space program,or uni- versities.They typically include an organizedbody of technical know-how;a cadre of specially trained experts and workers;and a

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 980 SOCIAL RESEARCH relateduniversity teaching and researchprogram. Moreover, the functioningof these systems,or technologies,often entails the creation of special legislativeand regulatorybodies, as well as ancillaryorganizations for the supplyof rawmaterials and the dis- tributionof itsproducts. There is a compellinglogic implicitin the emergence of this ambiguous,unspecific, indeterminate, well-nigh indefinable con- cept, technology,as a name for these ambiguous,messy, incoher- ent, new formations.This congruence takesus back to Raymond Williams'sinsight into the curious interdependence,or reflexivi- ty,involved in the social constructionof historicalmarkers like cultureor - in thiscase - technology.Earlier, I noted the blurringof the lines of demarcation- internallyas it were- betweenthe var- ious componentsof a particularmechanic art,and the reduced relativeimportance of the material-artifactualcomponent. But even more significant,perhaps, is the breakdownof the boundary separatingwhole technologiesfrom the rest of societyand cul- ture. Consider, for example, automotive technology.Its defining, indispensablematerial core is of course the internalcombustion engine, plus- naturally- the rest of the automobile chassis. But surelyit also includes the mechanized assemblylines, the great factories,the skilled work force,the automotiveengineers, the engineeringknowledge, the corporatestructures with their stock- holdersand theirhuge capital investments,and theirnetworks of dealers and repairfacilities. But where do we draw the boundary separatingall of thisfrom the restof societyand culture?Do we include, as part of automotivetechnology, the road-buildingand maintenance systems,the truckingindustry, the indispensable feeder industries- glass,rubber, steel, aluminum, plastic, and so on? Whatabout the minesthat provide the rawmaterials? Indeed, - what about the global oil industry an offspringof automotive technologythat vies, in size, wealth,and influence,with its par- ent?At its outer limits,the intricateinterpénétration of automo- tive technology and the rest of society and culture seems

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TECHNOLOGY: A HAZARDOUS CONCEPT 981 boundless and, finally,indescribable. The economic role of auto- motivetechnology, in its most comprehensivesense, is incalcula- ble; as a source ofjobs, for example, it may well account for as much as a fifthof the Americanwork force. To speak, as people oftendo, of the "impact"of a major technologylike the automo- bile upon societymakes littlemore sense, by now,than to speak of the impactof the bone structureon the human body.But it is when we speak of the overallimpact of technology,when the term putativelyrepresents a discretecategory of human activity,that its mosthazardous consequences come into view.

The Hazards ofReification The hazardous characterof the concept of technologyis a direct consequence of the historyjust outlined. That historyhas two major strands.We encounter one strand in common parlance nowadays,when technologyis used as if it referredto a tangible, determinateentity - a kindof thing.This usage is traceableto the word's tacit place in that familiarlineage of material artifacts, from stone tools to automobiles, introduced at the outset. Indeed, historiansand otherscholars in the human sciences now tend to project the concept of technologybackward in time to encompass the entire historyof tools. Yet, as we have seen, the concept onlycame into general use when,at the end of the nine- teenth century,the age-old artifactuallexicon of the mechanic artshad become inadequate. That is where the second strandin the historyof the termcomes in. The idea of tools or machines or, for that matter,any other materialartifacts did not begin to conveythe complex, quasiscientific,corporate characterof the new sociotechnical formationsthat emerged at that time. The curious factis that the discursivetriumph of the concept of tech- nologyis in large measure attributableto its vague, intangible, indeterminatecharacter - the fact that it does notrefer to any- thingas specificor tangibleas a tool or machine. If the firststrand givesus a concept of technologythat overemphasizesthe tangi- ble, the second is so inclusiveas to be amorphous. But then,we

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 982 SOCIAL RESEARCH finallyare compelled to ask, what sort of entityis technology? What does its historyreveal about itsessential nature? A significantresult of thathistory, with its unstable marriage of artifactsand socioeconomic structures,is that the concept, tech- nology,is peculiarlysusceptible to reification.To borrowGeorge Lukacs's lucid definition,reification occurs when "a relation between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a 'phantom-objectivity,'an autonomythat seems so strict- ly rationaland all-embracingas to conceal everytrace of its fun- damental nature: the relation between people." A distinctive resultof reificationobserved by Karl Marx,Lukacs remindsus, is the power exerted by commoditiesover human beings; in that case social relationsbetween people were mysteriouslyendowed withan objective,even autonomous character(Lukacs, 1971, pp. 83-87). I believe thatsomething similar has happened withtech- nology,which also has taken on an objective character,as if it existedindependent of itshuman creators,and is capable of con- trollingthem by virtueof an autonomyalien to them (Winner, 1977). But itwill be said that,whatever its limitations, the concept tech- nologyremains indispensable as the name foran increasinglylarge portionof human activityat the end of the twentiethcentury. Wit- ness its widespreaduse nowadaysto conveya sense of the accel- erating diffusionof new technologies; the rapidly expanding universeof gadgetry;the deepening involvementof innovative technologies in everyimaginable aspect of contemporarylife. Today,it is true,technology is the word we relyon to referto each and all of these developments.It is a keyword, in fact,in our dis- course about the "new world order,"with its global marketorga- nized around a technological armature of electronic communications.The commonplaceis thatthe transformationof global societyis being "driven"by the electronic revolutionin technology(Smith and Marx, 1995). The strikingfact is, however,that the concept of technology, when invoked on this plane of generality,is almost completely

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TECHNOLOGY: A HAZARDOUS CONCEPT 983 vacuous. It rarelyenables us to sayanything of genuine interestor value, to attributeany characteristicapplicable, across the board, to all or most technologies.It is impossible,for example, to say anythingmeaningful about the moral importof technologyor technologicalinnovation in general. We have long realized that some of our technologiesare unequivocallyevil, useful only for destruction,such as those used to produce nuclear bombs, land mines, or poison gas; and of course we also have unequivocally benign medical technologies,such as those capable of eliminat- ing hithertoincurable diseases, or of performingunimaginably delicate, microscopic surgical procedures. Thus, technology, according to a banalitymost of us encountered as children,is capable of enhancingand destroyinglife; it is good and bad, and this inherentcontradiction makes the futilityof the unceasing debate between Luddites and Technocratsall too obvious. One reason that technologyis hazardous, then, is that it stiflesand obfuscatesanalytic thinking. When we tryto explain whythat is so, the answerpoints to the factthat we cannot saywhat the word means. Earlier I asked, "What sort of entityis technology?"But the truthseems to be thatit is not an entityat all. An entity,accord- ing to mydictionary, is somethingthat exists as a particularand discreteunit. But technology,in the sense of the mechanic arts collectively,lacks both particularityand discreetness,and indeed it is no sort of unit whatever.This elusive nonentitycannot be identifiedwith any particularkind of artifact,or any particular social group, profession,or institution;nor does it representany specifiablebody of ideas, methods,or principles.This semantic vacuityis tacitlyconfirmed by the apparent inabilityof philoso- phers to say exactlywhat theymean by technology.Definitions of the word have been notoriouslyunsatisfactory. Heidegger defines it chieflyby saying what it is not,and among the otherinfluential attempts,perhaps the most frequentlycited is that of Jacques Ellul, who locates technologyin any manifestationof technique.By identifyingit withevery act of makingor doing,material or social,

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 984 SOCIAL RESEARCH he drainsit of all particularityand discreetness;the resultis that it has littleor no useful,specifiable meaning (Ellul, 1964). The vacuityof the concept mightnot mattervery much were it not for its omnipresence, and its implicitlyportentous consequences. Today an immensechorus of intelligentpeople lamentsthe fact that Ve" (humanity),in the tritephrase, "do not know where technologyis takingus." The chief hazard attributableto the concept of technology,as currentlyused, is the mystification,passivity, and fatalismit helps to engender.Today we invokethe word as ifit were a discreteenti- - - ty,and thus a causativefactor if not thechief causal factor in everyconceivable developmentof modernity.Although we can- not sayexactly what that "it" really is, it nonethelessserves as a sur- rogate agent, as well as a mask, for the human actors actually responsiblefor the developmentsin question.Because of itspecu- liar susceptibilityto reification,to being endowed withthe magi- cal power of an autonomous entity,technology is a major contributantto thatgathering sense, at the close of the millenni- um, of politicalimpotence. By attributingautonomy and agency to technology,we make ourselvesvulnerable to the feelingthat our collectivelife in societyis uncontrollable.The popularityof the belief that technologyis the primaryforce shaping the post- modern world is a measure of our growingreliance on instru- mentalstandards of judgment, and our correspondingneglect of moral and political standards,in makingdecisive choices about the directionof society.To expose thishazard is a vitaltask for the human sciences.

Notes i Heidegger,1977, p. 4. For myearlier assessment of Heidegger's argument,see "On Heidegger'sConception of Technology' and ItsHis- toricalValidity" (1984). 2 The firstuse ofthe word in thissense reported by the Oxford English Dictionarywas in 1859;but as notedbelow, Jacob Bigelow had used it as earlyas 1829, and it evidentlyhad appeared in German,Swedish, French,and Spanishin thelate-eighteenth century. Thus Johann Beck-

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TECHNOLOGY:A HAZARDOUS CONCEPT 985 mann, a German professor,is credited by Siebicke (1968) and Gille (1986) withits firstuse in a book title,Anleitung zur Technologie(1777). See also Morere (XII, 1966). Myversion of thishistory, it should be said, is not based on the kind of comprehensiveexamination of primary sources thatan authoritativeaccount requires. Such a study,especially one thatexamines the historyof the word in severalmodern languages, would be invaluable,but to the best of myknowledge, does not yetexist. 3 AlthoughI relyon American examples, I believe that Britishand westernEuropean equivalentsexist for many of them. 4 Webster,1903, IV, pp. 105-107. For a more detailed analysisof the speech, see Leo Marx, 1964, pp. 209-14. 5 The "technologicalsublime" refers to the extensionof the concept of sublimity,originally applied chieflyto the transcendent,quasitheo- logical attributesof naturalphenomena, to the new industrialartifacts. I discuss thistendency elsewhere (Marx, 1964, pp. 195-99); David Nye has made a comprehensivestudy of the subject (Nye, 1995). 6 Thus when Benjamin Franklinwas offereda potentiallylucrative patentfor his ingeniousnew stove,he explained his refusalto accept by invokingthe communitarianrepublican notion thatinventions are val- ued for theircontribution to the polity."I declined it froma principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, that as we enjoy greatadvantages from the inventionsof others,we should be glad of an opportunityto serveothers by any inventionof ours" (Franklin1950, p. 132). For otherdiscussions of thistopic, see also Marx, 1987, and Marx, 1996. 7 Roszak,1969, p. 5. Theodore Roszak,who helped to definethe char- acter of the studentrevolt, refers to the rebels as "technocracy'schil- dren,"and "the technocracy"as "thatsocial formin whichan industrial societyreaches the peak of its organizationalintegration. It is the ideal men usuallyhave in mind when theyspeak of modernizing,updating, rationalizing,planning" (Roszak, 1969, p. 5). 8 I add the qualification,"the modern era," to acknowledge the provocativetheory, advanced by (1966), that the first "machine"was in factsuch a system,the systematicorganization of work contrivedby the Egyptiansto build the pyramids.The troublewith this theoryis thatit ignoresthe artifactualcomponent of the concept of the machineand, when it lateremerges, the concept of technology.For a more extended analysisof thistheory, see myessay, "Lewis Mumford, Prophet of Organicism"(1990, pp. 164-80). 9 Dunlavy, 1994; Hill, 1957. At West Point, the militaryengineers, trained in the traditionof the Ecole Polytechnic,acquired a more

This content downloaded from 185.31.194.106 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:55:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 986 SOCIAL RESEARCH sophisticatedknowledge of geometry,physics, and of a general scientif- ic viewpointthan most American engineers at the time. A number of themleft the armyand became "civil"engineers, and workedon the rail- road. I am gratefulto MerrittRoe Smithfor calling my attention to this development. !0 Bigelow,1829, pp. iii-iv (emphasisadded). Bigelow'slectures were supportedby the endowmentof Count Rumfordwho, in his 1815 will, had leftHarvard $1000 a yearfor lectures designed to teach the "utility of the physicaland mathematicalsciences for the improvementof the usefularts, and forthe extensionof the industry,prosperity, happiness and well-beingof society"(Struik, 1948, pp. 169-70). Struikseems to have been the firsthistorian to creditBigelow with first using the mod- ern sense of the word technology. H Marx, 1978, p. 403; Toynbee, 1960. Marx's discussionin Capital I, PartIV, Ch. XV, "Machineryand Modern Industry,"is of particularper- tinence (Tucker,1978, p. 403). As late as itseleventh (1911) edition,The EncyclopaediaBritannica, which contained no separate entryon technolo- gy,was offeringthe word technologyas a possible alternativeto the (pre- ferred) use of technicalin the entryon "Technical Education" {The EncyclopaediaBritannica, 11th ed., XXVI, p. 487).

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