Alternative Technology: The Machine in the Garden Revisited?

AlternativeTechnology: TheMachine in the Garden Revisited? JoelNovek Avigoroustradition in American historical writing has outlined the largely optimisticreaction to the onset of American industrialization in the first half ofthenineteenth century when the social fabric was irreparably transformed bythe advent of the railroad, the steamship and the textile mill. Writers as diverseas Perry Miller, Leo Marx, Hugo Meier, Thomas Parke Hughes and LewisMumford have argued that in America, unlike Europe, the dominant reactionamong both intellectuals and the general public to early industrial developments was one of hope and enthusiasm. 1 Far from the "dark and satanic mills" of the European nightmare, the powerful symbol of early Americanindustrialism was, in the phrase of Leo Marx, a highly reassuring "machine in the garden": a new "middle landscape" in which the vexing antipathies between man and machine, nature and manufacture, would be resolved,then transcended. European industrialization may have produced social polarization, human degradation, urban slums and the despoilment of nature. No matter-the Americanexperience would be different. In America, industrialization would gohand in hand with "a new birth of community, decentralization, ecological balanceand social harmony." 2 In fact, America would redeem Europe from itsindustrial despair through a new synthesis combining the wealth and power ofindustrial technology with the beauty and harmony of nature. As Carey and Quirk observe: "While mechanical technology was welcomed [in Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 13, Number 3, Winter 1982 292 loelNovek America], it was to undergo a characterological change when received into the Garden of America. Machinery was to be implanted into and humanized by an idealized rural landscape. The grime, desolation, poverty, injusticeand class struggle typical of the European city were not to be reproduced here. America's redemption from European history, her uniqueness, was to be through unblemished nature, which would allow us to have the factory without the factory system, machines without a mechanized society" (p. 31). Tragically, though inevitably, this early American dream did not survive the period of massive industrialization which followed the Civil War.In the great wealth and raw industrial power of the period of triumphant capitalism, the imagery of the machine bloomed while the garden faded. The other side of the ledger-the slums, social polarization and environmental degradation - became as much a blight on the new world as theyhad been on the old. The doctrine of economic decentralization did enjoy a brief, though vigorous, revival early in this century in the form of the Progressive movement and, especially, the "New Freedom" policies espoused byWoodrow Wilson. Nevertheless, by the end of World War I the United States wasonce again firmly committed to a program of large scale industrial development. As Lewis Mumford observed, gradually the mechanical new world displaced the romantic new world and relegated the latter to the status of an escapist dream (p. 24). In recent years, however, this "escapist dream"-or, more precisely, the view that modern technology can be made compatible witha social order based on decentralization, self-sufficiency and ecological balance- has enjoyed a strong resurgence in popularity. A growing number ofwriters-among them Mumford himself- have advocated decisive changes in our technological organization so that it may begin to foster democratic decentralization and ecological harmony rather than the concentrations of power and environmental despoilment which are seen as the dominant trends today. These late-twentieth-century versions of the "machine in the garden" ideal have called for new and humane forms of technology variously labelled as "appropriate," 3 "intermediate," 4 "convivial," 5 "democratic," 6 "soft,"7 "libertory ,"8 and even "utopian." 9 Although each socio-technical blueprint remains distinct, the term "alternative technology" will be used to refer to those perspectives which emphasize that, given certain limits on its development and utilization, modern technology can be made compatible with fundamentally democratic, non-exploitative and non-alienating social relationships as well as with a benign approach to the natural environment. Thus "alternative technology" should not be confused with mere reactionary yearningsfor past simplicities but rather, like the "machine in the garden" ideal of the previous century, should be understood as an attempt to preserve much of the benefit of modern technology while restoring notions of community and harmony among men and between man and nature...