, is titled "How do Historians Deal With Technology". My thought it that few historians deal with technology at all, and most of those who do deal with technology seem to do so superficially. Fortunately there are some who are more serious about the theme.Nye in fact seems to be more interested in historiography. He continues to illustrate his thesis with lots of well chosen examples.
He introduces a number of important concepts:
- "Technological momentum" is an idea promoted by Thomas Hughes. The momentum is not exhibited by a new technology in its early days as bugs are being sorted out and efficiency of use is low, but for some technologies in their maturity as major investments are made in devices embodying the technology, in facilities for the production of such devices, and in networks of support for the devices. Think about automobiles, auto factories, roads, service stations, etc.
- "Soft (technological) determinism" is an idea that technology the impact of technology on socio economic institutions is not fixed and inherent in the technology per se, but rather that technology influences these institutions along with other factors in ways contingent of the history of the introduction of the technology.
- "Internalist (technological) histories" which focus on inventors and developers of specific technologies or technological devices. He identifies The Soul of a New Machine
by Tracy Kidder (a very good book) as an example of internalist history since it tells the story of the effort within a corporation to develop a new computer.
- "Externalist (technological) histories" which focus on the way in which economic, political, and cultural processes influence the development and diffusion of a technology. An externalist history of the Internet might focus on the military reasons behind the funding of packet switching technology, the reasons for the transfer of responsibility for the Internet from DARPA to NSF, the reasons that the World Wide Web developed at CERN was offered gratis to the world, and the political debate over Internet governance. I believe that all of these things influenced the way the Internet developed.
As I read Nye I find it important to deal better with the issue of planned (teleological) evolution versus evolution through natural, unplanned (teleonomic) processes. I suggest that even though a lot of people may be planning on how to achieve a final objective, the system in which they are involved may be teleonomic with order as an emergent property. Since Adam Smith we have understood that although the participants in a market may all be planning to maximize their individual profits, the market achieves clearing prices through natural, unplanned processes. Extending this metaphor, in the early days of the automotive industry there were many manufactures, each of which was planning ways to maximize profits. The market resulted in some of the products of some of the makers being more or less successful. Eventually unplanned market forces combined with the planning of the makers resulted in numbers of closely related products competing in niche markets. Ultimately I think technological evolution is best understood as involving both teleologic and teleonomic processes.
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