Changes in the Technological Landscape. Essays in the History of Science and Technology (review)

Svante Lindquist received the 2010 Leonardo da Vinci Medal, the highest recognition from the Society for the History of Technology, for an outstanding career in the field. In his excellent and witty da Vinci address, Lindquist shared with us his passion for woodwork. He makes his own pieces of furniture, seeks perfection, and keeps some of the pieces while excluding or reworking others, finding a common style among them. Thus, it is not surprising that in the preface of Changes in the Technological Landscape, the same topic of carpentry is used as a metaphor for its rationale and even as a classifying grid for the importance of the seventeen chapters.

This volume is a collection of articles and papers encompassing a time span of more than twenty-five years, arranged into three parts: “Historiography,” with six articles; “Case Studies,” with seven articles; and “Nobeliana,” with the remaining four articles. In the preface Lindquist states that his masterpiece, his original contribution, “the cabinet [placed] at the forefront as you enter the shop” (p. xiv), is the first chapter: “Changes in the Technological Landscape. The Temporal Dimensions in the Growth and Decline of Large Technological Systems.” The first version dates to 1987, and the 1994 published text is now considered a classic, read and discussed by historians of technology and their students. The main focus is the discussion of the almost obsessive interest historians of technology have in change and rapid growth, analyzed in short periods of time. Without denying the interest of this approach, the author proposes an alternative focus. He centered on “microstudies that evaluate significant changes from a longer perspective” (p. 6), which allows new actors to enter the scene. Svante Lindquist is a confessed follower of the Annales and the concept of longue durée is always in his mind when rethinking technological change and discussing the decline and fall of technological systems. Beyond the discussion of the models that have shaped mainstream analysis in the history of technology, Lindquist confronts us with a powerful challenge: to what extent do technological systems built in previous centuries and embodying values of those times continue to convey those old values to us?

The second cabinet to be displayed at the shop is, according to the author, the last chapter, a paper presented at a seminar in 2003. “The R&D Production Model. A Brueg(h)elesque Alternative” discusses a topic that is still fresh in our agendas, that is, the efficiency of today’s model of funding scientific and technological research and universities. Written in a period during which the author served as founding director of the Nobel Museum, he uses the history of the Nobel awards to deconstruct the misleading linear relationship between the number of Nobel Prizes and the percentage of GNP devoted to R&D, by introducing human and cultural factors in the equation, as well as time and space (circulation of scientists over time, profile of the higher education system, cultural atmosphere, etc.). The trend toward an absolute rule of the quantitative over the qualitative is sharply criticized by Lindquist and I dare say that the reading of this essay is surely an inspiration for most of us, dwelling as we do on the same kind of topics and pressures.

Away from the shopwindow of the store, we find the other chapters. Although presented in a more modest way, they are still excellent food for thought, most of them remaining up to date. Peeping out of the chests inside the shop, fifteen articles take us along a vast collection of topics: the identity of history of technology, in relation to other fields and particularly the history of science; the reception and validation of new theories; the complexity of the dynamics of innovation; the traps of hands-on driven presentation of science and technology; strategies for establishing an academic discipline, in particular with regard to visible signs; the...