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Technology and Culture 44.3 (2003) 586-590



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The Cultural Crisis of Engineering in the Information Age
Rosalind Williams, Retooling

Manuel Castells


The culture of engineering was the soul of the technological saga of the industrial era. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was, perhaps, the world's leading institution in the merger of science, engineering, and entrepreneurialism, and, as such, the crucible of that culture, at least in the United States. What happens, then, when we move toward a world of information and symbol processing, in which the mechanical world of machines is replaced by a hybrid of nonhuman nature and human-generated processes? Could it be the end of engineering as a specific culture, essentially focused on problem solving? Only in a certain sense, says Rosalind Williams in Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002, $27.95). "If anything, engineering-like activities are expanding. What is disappearing is engineering as a coherent and independent profession that is well defined by well-understood relationships with industrial and social organizations, with the material world, and with guiding principles such as functionality. Engineering is 'ending' only in the sense that nature is ending: as a distinct and separate realm. The two processes of disintegration are linked" (p. 31).

Williams goes on to present a fascinating account of the new relationships between technology and culture, seen through the prism of the organizational and intellectual transformation of MIT. She knows the place well, as her life as an academic historian is intertwined with the history of the institution. Her grandfather, Warren Lewis, was the first head of the pioneer Department of Chemical Engineering established at MIT in 1920, [End Page 586] and Williams served as dean of undergraduate education at the institute from 1995 to 2000. Now the director of MIT's Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Williams is also professor of writing, and it shows. This book is a literary jewel that delicately blends deep philosophical thinking, sociohistorical analysis, personal memories, and intimate experience in the plainest of language, naturally flowing from a clear mind and a serene look at the hard world of technology. But this is the danger in reading this book: it is too easygoing at first approach. It could be taken for an autobiographic parcours from a relieved dean, enamored with her university. In fact, folded into Williams's account of the organizational transformation of MIT in the Information Age is an extraordinary analysis of the interaction between culture, technology, and organizations, one whose value and interest goes beyond the world of academia. Thus, the modest contribution of this reviewer to the reader is to highlight and organize my own understanding of what this analysis is, so that the pleasure of reading can proceed without missing the essential argument subtly crafted into the narrative. I will present, with an engineer-like logic, Williams's argument about the crisis of engineering logic.

First, the notion of technological determinism is a false issue. Of course, "for historians of technology, technological determinism is the unthinkable thought" (p. 116). But more fundamentally, technology needs culture; technology cannot be thought without society, as society cannot be comprehended without its technological tools. However, this epistemological foundation does not solve the problems of understanding and analyzing the interaction between technology and society, because "it is easy to refute the logic of technological determinism, but the everyday experience of having to conform to 'the technology,' 'the software,' or 'the computer' cannot be refuted by logic" (p. 117). Thus, we need to analyze the specific relations of technology, culture, and organizations in specific settings and in connection to specific processes.

This is what Williams does, focusing particularly in the Reengineering Program that MIT implemented in the 1990s to introduce information technology into the management and functioning of the institute while reorganizing processes and tasks in teaching, administration, research, and social life. She shows how the introduction of SAP accounting software required the integration of many other institute functions within the same software logic. This scenario is very well-known...

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