{"title":"Using Podcasts to Humanize Scholars: Peoples and Things.","authors":"Lee Vinsel","doi":"10.1353/tech.2025.a971306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2025.a971306","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 4","pages":"1155-1163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145330635","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":0.7,"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":"Gendering \"Intelligent\" Machines: How Operating Engineers Constructed Their Masculinity.","authors":"Gilberto Fernandes","doi":"10.1353/tech.2025.a971303","DOIUrl":"10.1353/tech.2025.a971303","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines how construction machines have historically embodied and reinforced white masculine labor identities in North America. Focusing on operating engineers from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the article shows how these machines were symbolically cast as maternal, monstrous, or boyish, in ways that naturalized male dominance in skilled trades. Drawing on feminist technology studies and cultural analysis, the article demonstrates how human-machine relationships operated as gendered and racialized constructs in literature, propaganda, and labor publications. This article enriches histories of labor and technology by foregrounding how gender and power were co-constructed through machine imagery.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 4","pages":"1109-1139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145330681","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":"Into Your Ears: Reflections on Engagement with the History of Technology in Podcasts.","authors":"Johannes-Geert Hagmann","doi":"10.1353/tech.2025.a971305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2025.a971305","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 4","pages":"1145-1154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145330704","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":"Making Archives Come Alive: The Hagley History Hangout.","authors":"Gregory Hargreaves","doi":"10.1353/tech.2025.a971307","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2025.a971307","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 4","pages":"1165-1170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145330691","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":"Simulating the Astronaut: What Can Dummies Teach Us About Space Exploration?","authors":"Jordan Bimm, Patrick Kilian","doi":"10.1353/tech.2025.a971299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2025.a971299","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article recovers the neglected role of anthropomorphic dummies in Cold War space exploration. Going beyond their association with crash testing, the article shows how dummies were central to human factors research and helped configure ideas of the ideal spacefaring body. Through archival and media sources, the authors demonstrate how dummies embodied racialized and gendered norms and influenced both technical environments and cultural imaginaries. This reframing positions dummies as active tools in shaping astronautics, thereby contributing to the history of science, science and technology studies, and the cultural history of space.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 4","pages":"991-1023"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145330732","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":"Images as Portable Objects in the Historian's Toolkit.","authors":"Alka Raman","doi":"10.1353/tech.2025.a956846","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2025.a956846","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The image on the cover of this issue of Technology and Culture features an early modern Indian textile, popularly known as \"chintz\" in the Western world. The image depicts stylized flowers surrounded by curving leaves on meandering branches-a colourful artisanal rendition of imaginative flora on a utilitarian object. This essay argues that material objects, such as this chintz, contain embedded knowledge necessary for understanding techniques used in their production and for replicating these objects in new contexts. It further contends that magnified images of historical objects serve as movable microscopic pieces of the objects, enabling detailed visual examinations often not possible with the objects themselves. By foregrounding the use of objects as historical sources, the essay demonstrates the value of incorporating images as essential resources in the historian's research methodology.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 2","pages":"313-320"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144041882","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}
María Ignacia Jeldes Olivares, Paul Sprute, Monika Motylińska
{"title":"Ground Realities: Material Interactions in the Construction of the Buenos Aires Subway, 1933-44.","authors":"María Ignacia Jeldes Olivares, Paul Sprute, Monika Motylińska","doi":"10.1353/tech.2025.a965825","DOIUrl":"10.1353/tech.2025.a965825","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>How does the material world intervene in assembling infrastructure? This study examines the extension of the Buenos Aires subway during the 1930s and 1940s, using the concepts of \"constructability\" and \"ability\" as analytical lenses to reveal three interpretative layers-tunneling, concrete, and soil-that reflect varying degrees of human-nonhuman interaction and agency. By foregrounding the material aspects of the subway-building process, the article shows how concrete, locally available materials, and the urban environment challenged and recalibrated the German contractors' managerial approach. While acknowledging the ways materials can support or constrain human action, this article disputes the idea that materials possess independent agency. Instead, it calls for a more precise understanding of the physical aspects of construction that shape the material-human interface.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 3","pages":"799-826"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144734861","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":"Imagination Over Innovation: The Experienced Freedom of Movement of Nineteenth-Century European Travelers.","authors":"Anna P H Geurts","doi":"10.1353/tech.2025.a965820","DOIUrl":"10.1353/tech.2025.a965820","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article challenges conventional cultural histories of mobility by rethinking the impact of technology in nineteenth-century Europe. Drawing on nearly one hundred European cross-border travel accounts-especially by travelers from the northern Netherlands-it argues that mobility depended less on technological innovation than on what travelers imagined technology could do. Rather than being driven by inventions, satisfactory travel hinged on the availability of \"ordinary\" technologies, dense transport networks, reliable services, dry weather, affordable and socially accepted modes of transport, and travelers' bodies' perceived capacities. Meanwhile, over time, it was broader economic transformations and shifts in mentality that most deeply reshaped patterns of travel. Responding to calls from science and technology studies, the article redefines technology as a socially specific repertoire of imaginable practices rather than a sequence of modernizing breakthroughs.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 3","pages":"675-710"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144734864","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":"Introduction: The Challenge of New Materialism for the History of Infrastructure.","authors":"Jan Hansen, Frederik Schulze","doi":"10.1353/tech.2025.a965821","DOIUrl":"10.1353/tech.2025.a965821","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Do infrastructures possess thing-power? Do they act independently of humans, and how might materiality help us better describe the relationship between humans and infrastructures? This special section explores the promises and limits of new materialism for the history of infrastructure, complicating conventional understandings of the built world. New materialist approaches posit that the material world has intrinsic capacities-forms of agency that operate beyond human intent. While infrastructures are human-made, their assembly and operation involve numerous nonhuman actors and forces outside human control. The articles in this section approach infrastructures through material artifacts such as jamming sluice gates, minuscule sand particles, toxic creosote, crumbling concrete, and even the ionosphere. They examine how humans responded to these substances, structural components, expected material properties, and unknown matter like the ionosphere. This perspective reframes our understanding of infrastructure, knowledge production, and human-technology relations by foregrounding the thing-power embedded in the human-made environment.</p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"66 3","pages":"711-730"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144734865","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}