Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:54:34.818Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Shaped Technology: An Afterword

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Thomas Hughes
Affiliation:
Department of History and Sociology of ScienceUniversity of Pennsylvania

Extract

The informative and engaging essays in the foregoing collection suggest several interesting concepts that deserve further research and reflection. Over the past decade, the “social construction of technology” has become a concept often explored by historians (Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch 1987). Even though it has performed the useful function of discrediting technological determinism, the concept suggests too narrow a set of influences that shape technology. Two other concept, “nature-shaped technology” and “culture-shaped technology,” convey the character of technology more effectively. To designate “nature” as a shaper of technology reminds us that in a relatively prisine world the designer of technology negotiates with natural forces more than with human-built ones. To see culture as a shaper of technology suggests a broader range of influences affecting technology, not simply the social. “Shaping” conveys the notion of influence and avoids that of determinism better than “construction.”

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bijker, Wiebe E., Hughes, Thomas P., and Pinch, Trevor J., eds. 1987. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, Thomas P. 1983. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 18801930. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, Louis C. 1949. Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
White, John H. American Locomotives: An Engineering History, 18301880. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.Google Scholar