Natverksentreprenoren: En historia om teknisk forskning och industriellt utvecklingsarbete fran den Malmska utredningen till Styrelsen for teknisk utveckling

In Nätverksentreprenören (The network entrepreneur), the first dissertation to appear from the Department for History of Science and Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Hans Weinberger tells a story about the Swedish Council for Technical Research (TFR) and the National Board for Technical Development (STU), active 1942–68 and 1968–91 respectively. In doing so, he deals with “the social constructors of technology,” as he puts it, namely, the actors involved in shaping and maintaining a Swedish technical research policy.

Weinberger’s study circulates around three problem areas: conceptions of science, technology, and R&D among the actors; how these conceptions, in particular the linear model, functioned as tools to influence the organizational setting in governmental funding of technical research; and actual research projects along this line. Insights in the discussions between individuals related “in one way or the other” to TFR and STU link the two first points together, whereas case studies of particular techniques—X-ray glass in the 1940s, hand protheses (in the shadow of the thalidomide tragedy) in the 1960s, surface physics and chemistry in the late 1970s—exemplify the linear conception in action. Two meanings of the book’s title are implied here, first in pointing out that TFR and STU themselves acted in a network, second by describing their functions in creating new ones.

Weinberger’s account is persuasively detailed and well researched. I find the important third chapter particularly strong, as he breaks the chronology to give the reader a thematically oriented analysis of how the actors presented the linear model to fit with their views and interests. The model functioned, of course, as a tool to construe a tension between science and technology as well as between individualism and collectivism. On the one hand it made technology appear as the bridge between scientific research and industrial renewal, thus putting the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) in a central position in directing the research agenda. On the other it served the ongoing replacement of the image of the moral science-engineer in favor of the economic-technologist engineer with outspoken industrial ambitions. Maybe this was particularly the case in a small country like Sweden, Weinberger argues, since there was a fear of losing control over research to other nations. In that sense, the use of the linear model could also articulate the entrance into a new era, as the growing professional and political awareness of the possibility to influence technical change by collective—political—means was not always in accord with the industrialist view of the innovation process.

However, a close social study of the intentions of a limited number of actors might hide other points of interest for those who seek a more synchronous understanding of the activities at TFR and STU. How was civil life arranged around or outside TFR and STU? How did it change over time? Somewhat vague statements about typically “Swedish” standpoints, requiring some prior knowledge about corporativism, raise crucial questions. For instance, I am curious about a further analysis of the views framing the relations between TFR/STU and their science counterpart, the Swedish Council for Scientific Research (which, from time to time, received twice as much money from the government). Moreover, more systematic information about the shaping of and the work at some of the numerous branch research institutes would have widened the perspective of this book, not the least since Weinberger proposes that the establishment of these institutes, apparently independent of changing forms of funding, still models the actual execution of technical research in several areas.

These remarks should not override the fact that Weinberger’s five-hundred-page study is a scholarly work with high qualities. By mastering vast archival materials, he both convinces the reader about...