In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • The Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History
  • A. A. Den Otter
The Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History. R. Douglas Francis. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009. Pp. 340, $85.00 cloth

Since time immemorial, communication has been crucial among the inhabitants of the northern expanses of North America. For the First Nations, who initially spread across the continent, the Norse settlers, who abandoned the tip of Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula, or the modern city dwellers, enslaved to their smartphones, the ability to stay in touch, to trade, or to travel freely was and is essential to their economic, physical, and spiritual well-being, indeed to their survival. As the means of communications over time became more and more complex, thinkers began to speculate about the impact of technology on society. Douglas Francis's The Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History takes up the stream of thoughts of a substantial number of writers as it developed from the mid-nineteenth to the third quarter of the twentieth century.

Two themes unite Francis's study: the tension between what he calls the technological and moral imperatives and the various stages through which the thinkers about technology moved. In the former theme, his analysis perceives a dynamic by which neither of the two completely dominates or obliterates the other. Although the progression of writers became gradually more and more pessimistic about the seemingly increasing negative impact of technology on society, Francis argues, the moral imperative kept the absolute power of technology in check. Francis's second theme is based on Carl Mitcham's five categories of thinking about technology: technology as object, knowledge, process, volition, and imperative.

The first group of thinkers - all active in the mid-nineteenth century - viewed technology as object. These include engineers Thomas C. Keefer and Sandford Fleming, judge Thomas C. Haliburton, and inventor Alexander G. Bell. Overlapping these men, educators Adelaide Hoodless, Nathaniel F. Dupuis, John A. Galbraith, and others shared the former's enchantment with new communication technologies, which they ardently believed would not only spur economic progress and create untold wealth but also usher in a more moral, peaceful world. An emphasis on technical education - the knowledge phase - would, the latter believed, aid in realizing the technological and moral imperatives.

The First World War, according to Francis's compelling thesis, shattered the ebullient optimism of the nineteenth-century advocates of the technological imperative. The brutal destructive power of the machines of war and subsequently the dehumanizing force of the [End Page 321] machines of industry disillusioned historian, philosopher, and psychologist George S. Brett, student William L.M. King, novelist Frederick P. Grove, humourist and political scientist Stephen Leacock, and poet Archibald Lampman. Yet, while they feared the unleashing of the Frankensteinian monster in the mechanization of society, they still held firm to the vision that, through the social sciences and social reform, nations could forestall the total domination of technology. Francis nicely describes the fascinating tensions and contradictions, ambiguities and uncertainties that the immediate postwar authors articulated. Their view of technology, he concludes, while it induced fear, also provided hope.

The last group of philosophers of technology covered by Francis saw their subject as more than tools or machines. Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan postulated that the form or means of technology profoundly affects thought processes and the nature and character of societies. Reading between the lines of Francis's analysis, at this stage, the academics were not imperatively promoting technology. For them, it was not necessarily urgent or obligatory. Moreover, for Innis or McLuhan, technology, although pervasive, was no longer Frankensteinian. For contemporary George Grant, however, the centralizing pull of communication technology spelled danger. His Lament for a Nation unequivocally warned of the peril of Canada being sucked into the vortex of United States culture.

Only a few of the individuals who fall under Francis's purview were innovators of technology and so one can question whether or not the remainder, most of whom were academics, were motivated by a technological imperative. In what way were Innis and McLuhan moved by a technological imperative? This question can be answered easily for Keefer, Fleming, and Bell. Haliburton is another matter. His articulation...

pdf

Share