Technology and Culture最新文献

{"title":"Cover Essay: How to Interpret Postcards.","authors":"Lynn Spigel","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This essay demonstrates the value of postcards as visual evidence for historical research. Focusing on midcentury hotel and motel postcards, it offers a brief history of postcard production technologies and techniques and explores visual strategies they employed. While analyzing these images, the essay also considers how postcards deleted certain aspects of the scenes they depicted, rendering unpleasant objects invisible to the observer. Therefore, this essay argues that what is absent from the image is as significant as what is present.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 1","pages":"1-9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Waterwheels of Lizzafusina: Technological Innovation, Patenting, and Practical Necessity in Sixteenth-Century Venice.","authors":"David Gentilcore","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores the reliance of watermen (acquaroli) in early modern Venice on increasingly sophisticated waterwheels, designed, produced, and patented by competing inventors during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, to load fresh water supplies that supplemented the rainwater on which the city otherwise depended for its freshwater needs. Using a range of archival and printed sources, this article examines the tools that delivered water to the watermen's barges and the state-sponsored competition this spurred among inventors. More broadly, the article investigates how Venice's patent process compared to those elsewhere in sixteenth-century Europe, with specific attention to the status of petitioners, contemporary notions of expertise, knowledge flows, and the role of the state.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 1","pages":"107-133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Guild and the Laboratory: Shifting Sensory Regimes at Stockholms Bryggerier in the Early Twentieth Century.","authors":"Ingemar Pettersson, Daniel Normark","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article engages with scholarship on sensory history, techno-science, and the political economy of taste, illustrating how flavor evaluation became an industrialized, professionalized practice through a case study of Stockholms bryggerier, a Swedish brewer. Through these shifts, the brewing industry redefined taste as a techno-scientific concern, reshaping professional roles and positioning sensory assessment as a critical site of negotiation between traditional craftsmanship and scientific authority in twentieth-century food industries. From the late nineteenth century to the 1930s, Stockholms bryggerier shifted from a \"guild regime\" of sensory judgment, led by traditionally trained brewmasters, to a \"laboratory regime\" grounded in techno-scientific methods. Central to this transformation was the difference test, which standardized flavor assessment amid political tensions between Sweden's temperance movement and the brewing industry over beer's alcohol content and sensory appeal. This article shows how the difference test transformed sensory practices into a politically and scientifically mediated process.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 1","pages":"185-208"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Roundtable: Global Histories of Technology in Worlds of Environmental Change.","authors":"Erik van der Vleuten, Evelien de Hoop, Jonas van der Straeten, Jethron Ayumbah Akallah, Animesh Chatterjee, Matthias Heymann, Prakash Kumar","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the face of diverse and uneven environmental crises across the globe, ongoing efforts to \"globalize\" the history of technology field may be considered urgent. In doing so, however, we risk uncritically exporting the norms and practices of a predominantly Western-centric field-an arguably colonial act. This roundtable explores four areas of contention: how to conceptualize \"the global\"; why, how and with whom to study \"history\" amid threatened \"futures\"; how to articulate and delineate the field's subject matter (\"technology\"); and how researchers can collaborate equitably within and across diverse sites around the globe. Building on these discussions, we propose three themes for further conversation: how to transcend the North-South binary without disregarding its critical insights; how to balance the use of locally specific vocabularies with quasi-global terms; and how to develop collaborative relationships with those whose histories historians document, fostering joint experimentation with \"historiographical interventions.\"</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 1","pages":"11-37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Delivering Airpower: How Innovation in Wartime Foreshadowed Modern Supply Chain Strategies.","authors":"Peter Dye","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Modern supply chains claim novel levels of resilience and adaptability, but these were developed in World War I (and later redeployed during World War II) and have been \"reinvented\" in contemporary business contexts. This article highlights how the supply chains developed for wartime aviation logistics anticipated today's notions of supply chain resilience and adaptability. While the logistic innovations of World War II are widely recognized, those developed during World War I, particularly in aviation, are less well known but equally groundbreaking. The Royal Flying Corps pioneered agile supply chain strategies that sustained continuous air superiority on the Western Front-helping break the stalemate of trench warfare. Innovations such as postponement, strategic warehousing, bidirectional supply, recycling, circular manufacturing, and product service systems addressed the challenges of high attrition, technological advancement, and unpredictable demand.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 1","pages":"209-235"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Safari and the Screen: How Visual Technologies Shaped Italian Colonial Narratives.","authors":"Beatrice Falcucci, Gianmarco Mancosu","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent historiography on empire and postcolonialism has highlighted the diverse visual practices and technologies that shaped colonial narratives and knowledge. This article examines how various visual media were used to advance Italy's imperial agenda, drawing on both recent scholarship and original research. Introducing the concept of transmediality and its methodological importance for analyzing colonial cultural and visual practices, the article presents the case of Vittorio Tedesco Zammarano-an explorer, hunter, filmmaker, and writer active in Italian Somalia. Through a close examination of the technologies and cultural practices, this study reflects on how colonial fantasies, desires, and epistemes-particularly those related to hunting and safari-were intertwined with Fascist Italy's colonial ambitions, highlighting broader trans-imperial connections.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 1","pages":"71-105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dynamics of Doubt: How ASHRAE Engineers Became Ozone Skeptics, 1974-89.","authors":"Abeer Saha","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and its response to the ozone crisis in the 1970s, highlighting the science-skepticism that hindered responses to environmental issues in the twentieth century. Although well-positioned to address ozone depletion by developing safer chemical alternatives, ASHRAE resisted regulatory changes, framing concerns over CFC emissions as an attack on engineering and American technological dominance. Their rhetoric of doubt persisted for over a decade, even after corporations like DuPont acknowledged environmental harm and adopted chlorofluorocarbon controls. This study reveals how skepticism within scientifically literate communities can complicate environmental responses and explores the role of professional identity in shaping environmental and technical policy decisions.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 1","pages":"135-160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Telehospitality.","authors":"Lynn Spigel","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This essay explores computer profiling and surveillance systems developed by the hospitality industry in the 1960s and 1970s. Hotels and motels partnered with computer corporations and were among the first industries to create computer networks and management systems, using them for practical applications like reservations as well as to police guests and monitor hotel labor. However, there is no sustained history of the hospitality industry's role in computer research and design. Drawing on archival documents, trade journals, architectural literature, and hotel ephemera, this article shows how hospitality venues made computer profiling and surveillance seem welcoming, convenient, and user-friendly. The computer systems developed for hotels helped acclimate publics to the networked environments of contemporary everyday life, where digital devices and services ambiguously care for and surveil consumers, even in their own homes.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 1","pages":"39-70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Americanization Through Innovation: Polish American Women, Domestic Appliances, and the Household Revolution Debate, 1900-40.","authors":"Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>For Polish-American women, household appliances-promoted in Polish-language magazines in the United States in 1930s-were not merely labor-saving tools, but symbols of Americanization and social mobility. Revisiting Ruth Schwartz Cowan's argument that the domestic technological revolution primarily benefited middle-class women, this article examines the experiences of immigrant and second-generation Polish-American women in early twentieth-century and interwar Chicago. While Cowan highlights the increased expectations these technologies imposed on women, this article demonstrates how they facilitated Polish-American women's integration into American consumer culture and adaptation of American values. Drawing on oral histories and advertisements, this article explores the intersection of gender, class, and ethnicity in shaping immigrant women's interactions with modern domestic technology.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 1","pages":"161-184"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143383291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the Early Modern Academy ed. by Anna Marie Roos and Vera Keller (review)","authors":"Aurélien Ruellet","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933117","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the Early Modern Academy&lt;/em&gt; ed. by Anna Marie Roos and Vera Keller &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Aurélien Ruellet (bio) &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;em&gt;Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the Early Modern Academy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br/&gt; Edited by Anna Marie Roos and Vera Keller. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. Pp. 323. &lt;p&gt;In January 1742, a mummified ibis was presented at a meeting of the Egyptian Society in London, then carefully dissected a few days later. During another session, a mummy was opened by one of the members, Charles Pococke, who made hypotheses regarding the chemical components of the pigments used for coffins as well as the embalmment techniques. This is one of the numerous narratives that are scattered throughout the volume &lt;em&gt;Collective Wisdom&lt;/em&gt;, edited by Anna Marie Roos and Vera Keller, the result of three conferences that brought together scholars from different countries and thematic horizons.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;At the core of most of the eleven contributions, finely put in a wider historiographical perspective by the introduction, lays the question of the circulation of objects and the building of collections within the learned societies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ingeniously referred to as “collective wisdom,” the focus of the book is on “the knowledge gained from studying collections . . . and the collections generated through objectbased study and exchange (archives, correspondence, journals)” (p. 16). The chapters are not about the birth of museums, but rather about the way collections, sometimes heterogeneous, composed of antiquities as much as of natural specimens, were circulated among equally heterogeneous social grounds, involving physicians, surgeons, quacks, merchants, and apothecaries, and how those objects were the support of an intellectual interest that was not confined to curiosity. The geographic focus is on central and northern Europe, with chapters devoted to the Leopoldina, which held its meetings in Halle; the Spalding Gentlemen Society in Lincolnshire (SGS); the multifarious activities of the collector and professor Ole Worm in Copenhagen; the uses of objects and collections in pedagogic activities inspired by Comenius; or learned circles in the commercial cities of Frankfurt/Main and Dantzig.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The historian of technology will find many points of interest: besides the discussions of technical objects (like the “roman lamp”—actually a medieval Jewish lamp used for Sabbath—that Hans Sloane offered to the Society of Antiquaries) or technical processes (see for example the chapter by C. Grell on the metrological works of Burratini in Egypt), the contributions shed light on a series of technologies of knowledge management in those learned societies. The reader can appreciate, thanks to many illustrations in color, extracts from the minute book of the SGS: its entries, pointing at the presence of an object during a session, also gave ","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}