In This Issue

Three pieces that emphasize the “culture” of Technology and Culture bookend our July issue. The subject of history and memory, although popular among historians, has seen little attention in the history of technology. Rosalind Williams and Charles McFarland offer a personal and evocative essay, “Once More to the Mountain,” that considers the articulation of technology and memory: “Technological change has become so rapid and noticeable that it serves as a stand-in for historical change in general, crowding out less visible social, economic, and political events” (p. 456). Rick Popp’s “Machine-Age Communication” explores cultural interpretations of mobility and connectivity in the mid-twentieth-century United States as cars, planes, radios, and televisions together created an “automated” society. His timely and fascinating look at “narrative[s] of technological transcendence” (p. 484) historicizes the dreams (and nightmares) of mobility that have become ubiquitous in contemporary life. The cultural disruptions and opportunities of technology form the core of Alex Ruuska’s study of Native American interactions with railroads in the nineteenth century. Her “Ghost Dancing and the Iron Horse” shows the grave threats that railroads posed, and the ways that Native Americans responded, first by thwarting them, and ultimately by reinventing their relationship with this disruptive technology.

Jennifer Light’s “Discriminating Appraisals” highlights the computational power of maps in her study of the real estate industry’s efforts to “risk-rate” home loans in Chicago during the years of the Great Depression. Drawing on social scientific practices that privileged mapping, the industry hoped to develop computational aids to create a more “objective” means of appraisal. The result instead built certain biases into the process, profoundly affecting the shape of cities, while at the same time giving the map an important place in the arsenal of computational technologies used to grapple with complex urban problems.

Carl Zimring offers us a story of unintended environmental consequences in “The Complex Environmental Legacy of the Automobile Shredder.” The automobile shredder was first hailed as an environmental success for its ability to salvage cars and minimize the “blight” of auto graveyards. The gradual realization that it also spewed out toxic residues of automobile materials made shredders themselves targets of environmental concern. Zimring’s study highlights the social and economic struggles to draw attention to, and cope with, the life cycles of complex technologies.

Sean Johnston’s “Making the Invisible Engineer Visible” gives us a fresh view of nuclear history, bringing to light the experiences of nuclear engineers and the difficult sociotechnical process of industrializing the experimental nuclear piles created by atomic scientists. By exploring the interactions between the engineers and managers of DuPont and the scientists at Oak Ridge and Hanford, Johnston examines the emergence and growing authority of a new nuclear engineering professional.