Technology and Culture最新文献

{"title":"The Family Planning Association and Contraceptive Science and Technology in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain by Natasha Szuhan (review)","authors":"Agata Ignaciuk","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933124","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Family Planning Association and Contraceptive Science and Technology in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain</em> by Natasha Szuhan <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Agata Ignaciuk (bio) </li> </ul> <em>The Family Planning Association and Contraceptive Science and Technology in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain</em><br/> By Natasha Szuhan. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2023. Pp. 294. <p>Natasha Szuhan’s objective in this history of the Family Planning Association (FPA), a leading organization in the British contraceptive arena, established in 1931 and absorbed into the NHS during the 1970s, is to highlight the FPA’s role in demystifying and legitimizing contraception and sex as medical and social phenomena (p. 1). Drawing on the archives of the FPA held in the Wellcome Collection and dialoguing with the recent expansive wave of scholarship on contraceptive technologies, markets, and expertise in Britain during the central decades of the twentieth century (including Claire Jones, <em>The Business of Birth Control</em>, 2020; Jessica Borge, <em>Protective Practices</em>, 2020; and Caroline Rusterholz, <em>Women’s Medicine</em>, 2020), the distinctive value of Szuhan’s contribution lies in her crafting of the FPA story as a scientific and, to a lesser extent, social biography. Chapters are themed around the organization’s involvement in developing standards for contraceptive-gynecological care, testing and endorsing specific contraceptive technologies, conducting public health research into contraceptive practices and effectiveness, and lobbying on medical issues. While exploring relations between the FPA and the British government, the contraceptive industry, and medical lobbying groups, Szuhan also highlights the contributions made by individual physicians, researchers, and leading contraceptive firms. <strong>[End Page 1035]</strong></p> <p>Drawing on a vast and meticulously documented source base, <em>The Family Planning Association</em> imaginatively contributes to many key themes in the social history of mid-twentieth-century contraceptive technologies, such as the design of spaces and protocols for birth control clinics during the 1930s (ch. 2), the testing of barrier methods and spermicides (ch. 4), the uneasy relationships between family planning organizations and manufacturers (chs. 3–5), and how contraceptive lobbying groups operated in the intersecting arenas of state regulatory bodies, emerging national health authorities, medical elites, industry, and voluntary organizations (ch. 5). Centered on the professional biography of Helena Wright and including an analysis of her writing for popular and specialized audiences, chapter 3 will particularly appeal to wider audiences interested in contraceptive standards and the transnational biographies and careers of women physicians. The interesting stories of FPA disagreements with contraceptive manufacturers and the British Medical Association ar","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743492","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":"Im Medienlabor der US-amerikanischen Industrieforschung: Die gemeinsamen Wurzeln von Massenmedien und Bürokratie 1870–1950 [In the media laboratory of US-American industrial research: The common roots of mass media and bureaucracy 1870–1950] by Nadine Taha (review)","authors":"Felix Selgert","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933133","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Im Medienlabor der US-amerikanischen Industrieforschung: Die gemeinsamen Wurzeln von Massenmedien und Bürokratie 1870–1950 [In the media laboratory of US-American industrial research: The common roots of mass media and bureaucracy 1870–1950]</em> by Nadine Taha <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Felix Selgert (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Im Medienlabor der US-amerikanischen Industrieforschung: Die gemeinsamen Wurzeln von Massenmedien und Bürokratie 1870–1950<br/> [In the media laboratory of US-American industrial research: The common roots of mass media and bureaucracy 1870–1950]</em><br/> By Nadine Taha. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2022. Pp. 319. <p>In <em>Im Medienlabor der US-amerikanischen Industrieforschung</em>, based on her dissertation, Nadine Taha approaches American industrial research labs from a media studies perspective. In six case studies, partly based on the archives of DuPont, General Electric, and Kodak, the author aims to identify the common roots of mass and telecommunication media and the media of modern bureaucracies. The first technologies that spring to mind are the telegraph, the telephone, and the typewriter. Although all these technologies receive a mention, the six case studies refer to much less apparent technologies, including the paper-based roll film that simplified photography (ch. 2), a photographic sound recording and playback device called pallophotophone (ch. 5), a thirteen-month calendar (ch. 6), as well as cloud photography (ch. 7). Even if some of these technologies—most notably photography—fall into the mass media and bureaucratic technology category, this common feature is much less evident than for the technologies mentioned above. Taha tries to overcome this shortcoming by addressing the shared history of these media inventions and the technologies of bureaucracy (ch. 3). Here, the author refers to the control revolution (Beninger, <em>The Control Revolution</em>, 1989) and the rise of modern management (Chandler, <em>The Visible Hand</em>, 1977) as shared drivers of mass media and bureaucratic technologies. However, I read chapter 3 as if the author is more concerned with the bureaucratization of innovation in the form of industrial research departments than with the common roots of mass media and bureaucratic technologies. The idea that the bureaucratization of the innovation process can be traced back to the control revolution, the managerial revolution, and a more competitive market environment during the Progressive Era is a stimulating thought that could have been investigated more systematically.</p> <p>For Taha, the similarities between mass and bureaucratic media are also characterized by dual-use cases. An example of this is General Electric’s pallophotophone, which was aimed at the film industry and radio broadcasting but, in the end, failed in the market. However, the innovation was used in the company’s research department for a long time to pr","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"93 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743498","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":"Hollywood's Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the Globe by Ross Melnick (review)","authors":"Giles Scott-Smith","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933113","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the Globe</em> by Ross Melnick <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Giles Scott-Smith (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the Globe</em><br/> By Ross Melnick. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. Pp. 503. <p>This is a bold work of substantial proportions, setting out as it does to reframe our understanding of Hollywood as an overseas actor and purveyor of U.S. soft power. It does so by focusing like never before on the global network of cinemas owned and run by the major U.S. studios, instead of on the films themselves. In doing so, Melnick brings to light the all-encompassing, full-spectrum package that Hollywood delivered for nine decades to audiences around the world. The author refers early on to his work as “the first political, cultural, and industrial history of Hollywood’s foreign ownership and operation of hundreds of cinemas” (p. 2). The cinemas, with their architectural and ornamental splendor and their cornucopial abundance of consumable goods for the viewing publics, were definitely the embassies of soft power the book makes them out to be. While previous work has often focused on film production (for instance: Acland, <em>Screen Traffic</em>, 2003; Trumbour, <em>Selling Hollywood to the World</em>, 2002; Segrave, <em>American Films Abroad</em>, 1997), this title brings an empirical analysis of the structural power of film exhibition networks and the many commercial and cultural struggles that this involved.</p> <p>Twentieth Century Fox owned hundreds of cinemas across Africa and Australasia. MGM, in partnership with Loew, owned prime urban sites across Latin America. Paramount presented the heights of luxury at film palaces in <strong>[End Page 1013]</strong> Brazil and France. Warner Bros. ran an international network that spanned Eurasia. RKO, Universal, and United Artists were also involved, but to a lesser extent. The book, separated into twenty chapters spread across six continentally focused sections, aims unequivocally for full global coverage: Europe, Australasia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia. As the ideal outlets for presenting the appealing and seemingly unlimited facets of Americana to susceptible foreign publics, the physical presence of these cinemas also elicited widespread indignation and resistance from those who objected to the overpowering omnipotence of Americanization. Hollywood—with its unmatchable stars and glamour and relentless advertising campaigns—went a long way to ensure that film was marketed and experienced in the ways that Hollywood thought it should be. Maximum experience and maximum profit were the twin goals. Not surprisingly, rival local cinema chains could not abide their obvious second-class status in their own backyards. On the other hand, armed with all the gusto and glamour Hollywood ","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"166 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743484","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":"British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban: Squaring the Circle of Defence and Arms Control, 1974–82 by John Walker (review)","authors":"Christoph Laucht","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933138","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban: Squaring the Circle of Defence and Arms Control, 1974–82</em> by John Walker <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Christoph Laucht (bio) </li> </ul> <em>British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban: Squaring the Circle of Defence and Arms Control, 1974–82</em><br/> By John Walker. Abingdon: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 174. <p>John Walker’s latest book marks an important study of the complex relationship between nuclear weapons technology, arms control, and questions of nuclear (non)proliferation. It examines British intentions, motivations, aims, and objectives in the negotiations between the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States over a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) from 1974 to 1982. While Lorna Arnold, Richard Moore, Toshihiro Higuchi, and Walker himself in his earlier work have largely focused on the test ban debate of the 1950s leading up to the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, <em>British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban</em> sheds light on a thus far neglected aspect of nuclear arms control, or what Walker also refers to as “the Holy Grail of arms control since the 1950s” (p. 1). The author pays particular attention to the likely impacts of a CTBT on the reliability and safety of the United Kingdom’s nuclear arsenal.</p> <p>Apart from an introduction (ch. 1) and conclusion (ch. 6), <em>British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban</em> contains four main chapters. For heuristic purposes, the main body opens with an overview of the CTBT negotiations that took place in Geneva between 1977 and 1982 (ch. 2). During the talks, the Callaghan and Thatcher governments faced a fundamental dilemma: on the one hand, they aspired to a CTBT as an international measure to reduce nuclear stockpiles. On the other, they worried that a test ban might obstruct designing new warheads and jeopardize the reliability and safety of the existing British stockpile. Walker reminds us that this quandary resembled the situation that the Macmillan government encountered between 1954 <strong>[End Page 1061]</strong> and 1958 when the United Kingdom sought to complete its thermonuclear weapons program ahead of a moratorium on testing coming into effect. At the same time, practical issues around verification of a CTBT through National Seismic Stations added complexity to the negotiations.</p> <p>The three chapters that follow focus more specifically on key themes concerning British interests in the talks. From 1974, it became apparent that the United Kingdom required continued nuclear testing on the Nevada Test Site in the United States to proceed with the development of hardened warheads for the Chevaline upgrade of the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs; ch. 3). Simultaneously, testing was needed to ensure the safety and reliability of the United Kingdom’s stockpile (ch. 4). As Walker shows, British dependence on the United States—both techno","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743502","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":"Meilensteine der Rechentechnik: Band 1: Analog- und Digitalrechner, Automaten und Roboter, wissenschaftliche Instrumente, Schrittfür-Schritt-Anleitungen [Milestones in computing technology: Volume 1: Analog and digital computers, automata and robots, scientific instruments, step-by-step instructions], and: Meilensteine der Rechentechnik: Band 2: Erfindung des Computers, Rechnerbau in Europa, weltweite Entwicklungen, zweisprachiges Fachwörterbuch, Bibliografie [Milestones in computing technology: Volume 2: Invention of the computer, computer construction in Europe, worldwide developments, bilingual technical dictionary, bibliography] by Herbert Bruderer (review)","authors":"Matthias Röhr","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933128","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Meilensteine der Rechentechnik: Band 1: Analog- und Digitalrechner, Automaten und Roboter, wissenschaftliche Instrumente, Schrittfür-Schritt-Anleitungen [Milestones in computing technology: Volume 1: Analog and digital computers, automata and robots, scientific instruments, step-by-step instructions]</em>, and: <em>Meilensteine der Rechentechnik: Band 2: Erfindung des Computers, Rechnerbau in Europa, weltweite Entwicklungen, zweisprachiges Fachwörterbuch, Bibliografie [Milestones in computing technology: Volume 2: Invention of the computer, computer construction in Europe, worldwide developments, bilingual technical dictionary, bibliography]</em> by Herbert Bruderer <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Matthias Röhr (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Meilensteine der Rechentechnik: Band 1: Analog- und Digitalrechner, Automaten und Roboter, wissenschaftliche Instrumente, Schrittfür-Schritt-Anleitungen <span>[Milestones in computing technology: Volume 1: Analog and digital computers, automata and robots, scientific instruments, step-by-step instructions]</span></em> <em>Meilensteine der Rechentechnik: Band 2: Erfindung des Computers, Rechnerbau in Europa, weltweite Entwicklungen, zweisprachiges Fachwörterbuch, Bibliografie <span>[Milestones in computing technology: Volume 2: Invention of the computer, computer construction in Europe, worldwide developments, bilingual technical dictionary, bibliography]</span></em><br/> Third edition. By Herbert Bruderer. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Verlag, 2020. Pp. 946 and 1035. [English edition: Milestones in Analog and Digital Com puting. Basel: Springer, 2020. Pp. 2053.] <p>When reviewing a publication, a lot depends on expectations, and this is particularly true in this case. Anyone who is, as the reviewer was, deceived by first impressions and expects a comprehensive two-volume encyclopedia, compiled according to objective criteria, could be disappointed. However, anyone expecting the collected findings of Herbert Bruderer, a recognized expert in historical calculation techniques, will be rewarded with an incredibly rich and detailed work. In two bulky volumes with a total of over 2,000 pages, the author covers a wide range of historical tools for calculating.</p> <p>The first volume focuses on mechanical devices and their functioning, context of creation, and preservation in museums and collections. The spectrum of devices covered ranges from the ancient abacus, slide rules, and mechanical calculators to figure machines. There is a focus on devices with links to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. For example, the history of the Curta, a compact four-species machine by inventor Curt Herzstark, is explored in depth. The numerous color photographs of devices and document facsimiles are particularly noteworthy, indicating that the volumes are primarily directed to enthusiasts and collectors of historical computing devices. For this special clientele, the meticulously researc","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"90 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743506","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":"Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling by Jamie L. Jones (review)","authors":"Amy Kohout","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933136","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling</em> by Jamie L. Jones <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Amy Kohout (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling</em><br/> By Jamie L. Jones. Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press, 2023. Pp. 244. <p>It might be because my family has been watching <em>The Crown</em>, but as soon as I read that George H. Newton and Fred J. Engel-hardt orchestrated the tour of a dead whale around the U.S. Midwest in the early 1880s—and that it became known as the “Prince of Whales”—Jamie L. Jones had sold me on <em>Rendered Obsolete</em>. While this whale is the subject of just one chapter, the Prince of Whales operates as a compelling example of the way Jones thinks about the relationship between whaling and what she calls “fossil modernity” (p. xi).</p> <p><em>Rendered Obsolete</em> is an interdisciplinary environmental humanities project that engages energy studies, infrastructure studies, media studies, and oceanic studies to model what Jones calls “energy archaeology,” or “a way of telling the history of energy from the point of view of the present in order to locate the traces of old energy resources, technologies, and cultures in <strong>[End Page 1057]</strong> contemporary and emerging energy cultures” (p. 14). This move destabilizes the boundaries between different kinds of energy regimes and helps readers see how “whaling culture scaffolded fossil fuel culture” (p. 7), resulting in a rich cultural history of an earlier energy transition. Each chapter centers different sites of cultural production: <em>Moby-Dick</em> and the Rockwell Kent illustrations accompanying a 1930 edition are the subjects of chapters 1 and 5; the rise of “quaintness tourism” and meaning-making on Nantucket in chapter 2 and the whitewashing of whaling history (specifically whalers), using what Jones calls “extractivist nostalgia” (p. 119), in chapter 4 situate shifts in whaling culture in place; and the paired inland stories of the Prince of Whales and the <em>Progress</em>, a wooden whaling ship transported to the 1893 World’s Fair, are the focus of chapter 3. Combined, these chapters offer a nuanced, novel take on how whaling and whaling culture reflect “the flickering associations of modernity and obsolescence” (p. 113) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.</p> <p>While readers familiar with the concepts Jones is engaging here will find much to think with, <em>Rendered Obsolete</em> also offers readers from a broad range of disciplines pathways into the book’s big ideas. I want to underscore the accessibility of the chapters centered on Melville; even those not well versed in literary studies might feel called to (re)visit the white whale as a result of Jones’s discussion of how “the novel offers a keen reflection on the future of energy economies after energy transition” (p. 53). This opens ","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"161 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743696","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":"African Environmental Crisis: A History of Science for Development by Gufu Oba (review)","authors":"Rohini Patel","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933108","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>African Environmental Crisis: A History of Science for Development</em> by Gufu Oba <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Rohini Patel (bio) </li> </ul> <em>African Environmental Crisis: A History of Science for Development</em><br/> By Gufu Oba. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Pp. 258. <p>Historian and environmental scholar Gufu Oba’s <em>African Environmental Crisis</em> is an excellent analysis of the unfolding and longevity of the “African environmental crisis hypothesis” (AEC) during the colonial and postcolonial periods in East Africa, a hypothesis that located the causality of environmental degradation on African peoples and Indigenous forms of land-use systems. Oba draws out the history of this hypothesis to show how it was constructed at various moments under colonial empires in East Africa since the nineteenth century and how it emerged at the intersection of environmental change, colonial development schemes, and scientific knowledge production under empires. The significance of the AEC was how it functioned to undermine Indigenous land use and in turn served to justify the imposition of imperial scientific and development regimes, while ignoring the material environmental consequences of the latter.</p> <p>Oba focuses on Tanganyika, Uganda, and Kenya in East Africa, identifying this as an important region where several ideas of the AEC took shape. Oba organizes the book into three thematic parts with chronological overlap. In part 1, the reader gets a rich historical analysis of the precolonial complexity of Indigenous African forms of land use and subsistence and European colonial explorers’ mixed impressions of the landscapes, including an important precedent of the AEC in the form of an unfounded desiccation hypothesis. But with harsh events, from epidemics to plagues, at the end of the nineteenth century, British and German imperial administrations took the opportunity to establish scientific research stations across the region, imposing new infrastructures of imperial science.</p> <p>This sets the basis for understanding the emergence of the AEC by the 1930s. It was animated locally by these events and by global and scientific theories, including the projection of discourses ignited by the Dust Bowl of the U.S. plains onto African environments. Part 2 inspects practices and infrastructures of imperial sciences at different points in the mid-twentieth century, including the experimental character of science for development enfolded in agronomic and range science, expansion of social science research, and administrative strengthening of technical assistance development models into the 1950s. Part 3 inquires into species changes like the tsetse fly and locusts and imperial responses, which took the form of noxious chemical technologies from arsenic to dieldrin, aerial spraying, and surveillance tools, among other methods.</p> <p>Oba meticulously uses a range of archival sources and ","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743664","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":"Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle by Matthew H. Hersch (review)","authors":"Michael J. Neufeld","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933141","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle</em> by Matthew H. Hersch <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Michael J. Neufeld (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle</em><br/> By Matthew H. Hersch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023. Pp. 315. <p><em>Dark Star</em> (a title taken from an obscure science fiction movie) is not a comprehensive technical history of NASA’s space shuttle program, nor does it contain much new information. (For that, see the work of Dennis Jenkins.) Rather, it is a scathing critique of what Hersch sees as a project doomed from the start by space agency leaders’ fixation on a winged, reusable rocket plane as the means to drastically reduce the cost of space launch. Conceived as part of the infrastructure of an ambitious post-Apollo space program, it became instead NASA’s last chance to sustain human spaceflight as its budget began falling even before the first lunar landings. In order to save the shuttle, the agency made major design concessions to secure Air Force participation and to reduce peak expenditures in the lean 1970s. The result was a “bad design” (p. 160) that NASA accepted on the <strong>[End Page 1066]</strong> assumption that the shuttle would soon be redesigned or replaced—it never was. As a result, “<em>the shuttle failed because it was designed to fail</em>” (p. 12; italics in the original).</p> <p>Hersch is critical of the most important scholarly work on the topic, Diane Vaughn’s <em>The Challenger Launch Decision</em> (1996). That book is a sociological analysis of the first shuttle accident in 1986, and Vaughn asserts that the disaster’s root cause was poor management, leading to the “normalization of deviance” and the refusal to recognize that a catastrophic failure of one of the solid-rocket boosters (SRBs) was imminent. Hersch argues instead that NASA managers succumbed to “fatalism” (p. 160) because they knew that the shuttle’s design was flawed. Mounting the orbiter on the side of a huge external tank that shed insulating foam, often striking the orbiter’s fragile reentry protection system, and next to segmented SRBs that could burn through or explode, doomed the system to an accident. Making matters worse, the design constraints made it impossible to install an escape system for the full crew.</p> <p>I am in fundamental agreement with Hersch’s critique of the shuttle, which I have long considered the United States’ worst space policy decision. (Full disclosure: I am mentioned in passing in the acknowledgments and my work is cited and quoted.) But he often pushes the argument too far. In his analysis of the <em>Challenger</em> accident, he makes his disagreement with Vaughn into a binary choice: either it was a short-term management failure, or it was a long-term result of a bad design (pp. 149–56). Yet in his epilogue, he concedes that it could be both (p. 217). He condemns the segmented SRB (in which the solid pr","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":"141743505","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":"Mexican Icarus: Aviation and the Modernization of Mexican Identity, 1928–1960 by Peter B. Soland (review)","authors":"Michael K. Bess","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933110","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Mexican Icarus: Aviation and the Modernization of Mexican Identity, 1928–1960</em> by Peter B. Soland <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Michael K. Bess (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Mexican Icarus: Aviation and the Modernization of Mexican Identity, 1928–1960</em><br/> By Peter B. Soland. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023. Pp. 256. <p>Peter B. Soland’s <em>Mexican Icarus</em> explores the intersection of culture, technology, and celebrity in modernizing Mexico. The author notes that it is “the first monograph-length, scholarly analysis of aviation development in Mexico” (p. 16). He considers how the aviation industry, and aviators in particular, played a key role in the reconstruction of the Mexican state and society following the 1910 revolution. The strengths of <em>Mexican Icarus</em> lie in Soland’s narratives of the people (mostly men, as he acknowledges) who championed aviation; their biographies serve as framing for a larger national narrative of how elites and average people interpreted the importance of flight. For example, Soland writes about Emilio Carranza—from a wealthy northern family and the nephew of a former president—who became known as the “Mexican Lindbergh” for his aeronautical feats. Following a plane crash that took his life, in death he became a “martyr” of modernization, which inspired others to take up flight.</p> <p>As Soland shows, however, most Mexicans could not afford the costs for training to become pilots. People wrote the left-populist president Lázaro Cárdenas for financial help, but the economic conditions of the 1930s and 1940s meant that many aviators either came from wealth or had backgrounds in the Mexican armed forces. Despite the barriers to flight, Soland does share one inspiring and astonishing case of a young man from the countryside making good on his dream to be an aviator. Miguel Carrillo Ayala built his own plane, relying on manuals translated into Spanish and a focus bordering on obsessive to achieve his goal. The government took notice and supported his work; when he flew from his hometown in Michoacán and landed in Mexico City, the achievement made headlines across the country. Soland notes that the extraordinary circumstances of Carrillo’s journey highlighted the challenges most people faced if they hoped to fly.</p> <p>Reading <em>Mexican Icarus</em>, one comes away with an understanding that most Mexicans experienced flight as spectators. Whether consuming news reports on the radio or in print, or attending the takeoff and landings of celebrity “goodwill aviators” or the funeral of one of these “martyrs” after a crash, average people were passive consumers of aviation. In this way, the line between aviators and celebrities was a thin one. For decades, aviators like Carranza, Francisco Sarabia, and others captivated the public’s imagination, especially in the collective ceremonies surrounding their deaths. Soland notes a turnin","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743668","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":"In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour by Paola Bertucci (review)","authors":"Alan Marshall","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933116","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour</em> by Paola Bertucci <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Alan Marshall (bio) </li> </ul> <em>In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour</em><br/> By Paola Bertucci. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023. Pp. 168. <p>Paola Bertucci’s book is a well-written and engaging study about a 1749 visit to Italy, the land of “marvels,” by the “intelligent traveler” Jean Antoine Nollet, a French “philosopher . . . [and] a man of true worth” (p. 25). Those visiting Italy in the period often came armed with stereotypes that presumed Italians were more prone than most to believe in the “marvelous” over the “truth,” and Nollet was no different. It was an era of “fabricated realities” with a contemporary craze for electrical cures, and Nollet aimed to undermine those he saw as impostors. It is this debate, over four chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion, that Bertucci seeks to examine.</p> <p>In fact, the manuscript diary of Nollet that lies at the center of Bertucci’s book reveals that Nollet’s scientific travels were also a cover for a more secret mission he undertook for the French state. He was there not only to battle the land of marvels but to uncover the mysteries of the Italian silk industry. We are familiar enough in our own day with such economic espionage, yet Bertucci, sensibly enough, eschews that phrase as far too modern an interpretation for what Nollet was actually up to. Instead, she argues that he was really a philosophic gentleman on a state-sponsored “intelligent” tour. While Nollet did disguise his actual intentions and often used dissimulation to gain evidence, the Italian silk industry in fact proved all too open to him as a man of letters (p. 17).</p> <p>This intelligent traveler also undertook to examine the contemporary Italian enthusiasm for medical electrical cures. In this respect, Nollet was keen to undermine what he saw as Italian self-deception. In an era where wheel-cranked electric machines could bring with them not only the sparks of shock (literally, in some cases) but also an understanding of electricity’s supposed curative properties, Nollet sought to restore order and control in a printed philosophical duel. Here his reasoned “truth” about the subject of electricity could not only vanquish the Italian love of the marvelous but also <strong>[End Page 1019]</strong> remove it from the hands of quack practitioners, who were seen by him as a major threat to scientific truth as presented by the French Academy.</p> <p>Nollet’s especial bête noire was Gianfrancesco Privati. Privati’s electrical medicated tubes were supposedly designed for the curing of medical ailments, but they were also a means to sell his encyclopedia. They were shown off in electrical soirées, where hand-cranked el","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141743489","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}