Technological parables and iconic illustrations: American technocracy and the rhetoric of the technological fix

This paper traces the role of American technocrats in popularizing the notion later dubbed the “technological fix”. Channeled by their long-term “chief”, Howard Scott, their claim was that technology always provides the most effective solution to modern social, cultural and political problems. The account focuses on the expression of this technological faith, and how it was proselytized, from the era of high industrialism between the World Wars through, and beyond, the nuclear age. I argue that the packaging and promotion of these ideas relied on allegorical technological tales and readily-absorbed graphic imagery. Combined with what Scott called “symbolization”, this seductive discourse preached beliefs about technology to broad audiences. The style and conviction of the messages were echoed by establishment figures such as National Lab director Alvin Weinberg, who employed the techniques to convert mainstream and elite audiences through the end of the twentieth centur

Holograms: The story of a word and its cultural uses

Holograms reached popular consciousness during the 1960s and have since left audiences alternately fascinated, bemused or inspired. Their impact was conditioned by earlier cultural associations and successive reimaginings by wider publics. Attaining peak public visibility during the 1980s, holograms have been found more in our pockets (as identity documents) and in our minds (as video-gaming fantasies and “faux hologram” performers) than in front of our eyes. The most enduring, popular interpretations of the word “hologram” evoke the traditional allure of magic and galvanize hopeful technological dreams. This article explores the mutating cultural uses of the term “hologram” as marker of magic, modernity and optimism

An unconvincing transformation? Michelson's interferential spectroscopy

Albert Abraham Michelson (1852-1931), the American optical physicist best known for his precise determination of the velocity of light and for his experiments concerning aether drift, is less often acknowledged as the creator of new spectroscopic instrumentation and new spectroscopies. He devised a new method of light analysis relying upon his favourite instrument – a particular configuration of optical interferometer – and published investigations of spectral line separation, Doppler-broadening and simple high-resolution spectra (1887-1898). Contemporaries did not pursue his method. Michelson himself discarded the technique by the end of the decade, promoting a new device, the ‘echelon spectroscope’, as a superior instrument. High-resolution spectroscopy was taken up by others at the turn of the century using the echelon, Fabry-Pérot etalon and similar instruments. Michelson’s ‘Light Wave Analysis’ was largely forgotten, but was rediscovered c1950 and developed over the following three decades into a technique rechristened ‘Fourier transform spectroscopy’. This paper presents Michelson’s interferometric work as a continuum of personal interests and historical context as an example of 'research technology' and 'peripheral science'

Holograms are no longer the future, but we must not forget them - here's why

When technologies let us down, they tend to be forgotten. There's a very good reason why this should be resisted

In search of space: Fourier spectroscopy, 1950-1970

In the large grey area between science and technology, specialisms emerge with associated specialists. But some specialisms remain ‘peripheral sciences’, never attaining the status of disciplines ensconced in universities, and their specialists do not become recognised professionals. A major social component of such side-lined sciences – one important grouping of techno-scientific workers – is the research-technology community. An important question concerning research-technology is to explain how the grouping survives without specialised disciplinary and professional affiliations. The case discussed illustrates the dynamics of one such community

Vaunting the independent amateur: Scientific American and the representation of lay scientists

This paper traces how media representations encouraged enthusiasts, youth and skilled volunteers to participate actively in science and technology during the twentieth century. It assesses how distinctive discourses about scientific amateurs positioned them with respect to professionals in shifting political and cultural environments. In particular, the account assesses the seminal role of a periodical, Scientific American magazine, in shaping and championing an enduring vision of autonomous scientific enthusiasms. Between the 1920s and 1970s, editors Albert G. Ingalls and Clair L. Stong shepherded generations of adult ‘amateur scientists’. Their columns and books popularized a vision of independent nonprofessional research that celebrated the frugal ingenuity and skills of inveterate tinkerers. Some of these attributes have found more recent expression in present-day ‘maker culture’. The topic consequently is relevant to the historiography of scientific practice, science popularization and science education. Its focus on independent nonprofessionals highlights political dimensions of agency and autonomy that have often been implicit for such historical (and contemporary) actors. The paper argues that the Scientific American template of adult scientific amateurism contrasted with other representations: those promoted by earlier periodicals and by a science education organization, Science Service, and by the national demands for recruiting scientific labour during and after the Second World War. The evidence indicates that advocates of the alternative models had distinctive goals and adapted their narrative tactics to reach their intended audiences, which typically were conceived as young persons requiring instruction or mentoring. By contrast, the monthly Scientific American columns established a long-lived and stable image of the independent lay scientist

Alvin Weinberg and the promotion of the technological fix

The term “technological fix”, coined by technologist/administrator Alvin Weinberg in 1965, vaunted engineering innovation as a generic tool for circumventing problems commonly conceived as social, political or cultural. A longtime Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, government consultant and essayist, Weinberg also popularized the term “Big Science” to describe national goals and the competitive funding environment after the Second World War. Big Science reoriented towards Technological Fixes, he argued, could provide a new “Apollo project” to address social problems of the future. His ideas – most recently echoed in “solutionism” – have channeled confidence and controversy ever since. This paper traces the genesis and promotion of the concept by Weinberg and his contemporaries. It argues that, through it, the marginal politics and technological confidences of interwar scientists and technocrats were repositioned as mainstream notions closer to the heart of Big Science policy

The parallax view: the military origins of holography

The title of this piece is meant to evoke at least three sources. The first – and perhaps the only obvious one – concerns the ability of holograms to display parallax, a shifting of visual viewpoint that allows a three-dimensional image to reveal background objects behind those in the foreground. This parallax view is a unique feature of holograms as visual media. A second allusion is to the American film The Parallax View (1974, director A. J. Pakula), a rather paranoid thriller focusing on conspiracy theories concerning government and corporations. To a casual observer, the bare details of the military origins of holography suggest just such cynical and centrally-directed development, although I hope to dispel such simplistic ideas here. And a third passing reference is to the book The Parallax View (2006) by Slavoj Zizek, a wide-ranging and deep exploration of duality in political views, ontological interpretations and scientific methods, among other topics. Zizek’s theme, as well as Pakula’s, is relevant to my approach, which focuses on a parallax of both practice and intent. During the first successful decade of holography, conflicting viewpoints developed between distinct communities: the militarily-guided engineers who invented practical holography, and the later imaging scientists and artisans who stressed three-dimensionality and other attributes instead of the original goal of optical image processing. I argue that distinct groups of users had different perceptions of what holography is and what it is for

Beware the cult of 'tech fixing' -- it's why America is eyeing the nuclear button

On technological fixes and the dangers of the shallow short-term problem solving of social, political and economic problems by technological means alone

Informing, teaching or propagandising? Combining Environmental and Science Studies for undergraduates

This article discusses experiences in the integrated teaching of Environmental Studies and Science Studies in a generalist curriculum at a university campus in Scotland. At the University of Glasgow Crichton Campus, a mixed curriculum has been developed to combine coherently Environmental and Science Studies, perhaps the first such curriculum in the UK and equally uncommon in America. The Crichton curricum is intentionally multi-disciplinary, drawing closely on the successful nineteenth-century Scottish model exported to America. This generalist approach, emphasising broad philosophical principles, informs the courses and their inter-relationships