Technological parables and iconic illustrations: American Technocracy and the rhetoric of the technological fix

 Sean F. Johnston 

University of Glasgow

 School of Interdisciplinary Studies 

http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/141781/7/141781.pdf

 Abstract

 This paper traces the role of American technocrats in popularizing the notion later dubbed the “technological fix”. Channeled by their long-term “chief”, Howard Scott, their claim was that technology always provides the most effective solution to modern social, cultural and political problems. The account focuses on the expression of this technological faith, and how it was proselytized, from the era of high industrialism between the World Wars through, and beyond, the nuclear age. I argue that the packaging and promotion of these ideas relied on allegorical technological tales and readily-absorbed graphic imagery. Combined with what Scott called “symbolization”, this seductive discourse preached beliefs about technology to broad audiences. The style and conviction of the messages were echoed by establishment figures such as National Lab director Alvin Weinberg, who employed the techniques to convert mainstream and elite audiences through the end of the twentieth century. Keywords technocracy; technological fix; rhetoric; Howard Scott; Alvin M. Weinberg Introduction Confidence in societal progress via engineering solutions became a feature of industrial discourse from the early twentieth century. 1 This paper addresses the popularization of such modernist faith over subsequent decades, focusing on the narrative techniques that underlay them. It argues that effective rhetoric about the problem-solving powers of technologies was developed and delivered by two key apostles, the technocrat Howard Scott and national post-WWII laboratory director Alvin Weinberg. Their evangelizing of the transformative social and political potential of technologies was unusually enduring, influencing broad audiences through the end of the century. The paper focuses on a specific but fertile article of their shared faith: the notion that technological solutions are superior to more traditional political, economic, educational, and other social-science approaches to problem-solving. In the most radical form of the claim, its proponents argued that technological innovation could bypass or entirely replace these traditional approaches to human issues. By tracing the idea through its networks of dissemination, and employing close textual analysis of newly available sources, the paper addresses how modern technological beliefs were packaged and spread for wider publics. The account traces these discourses about technology, and the ways they were communicated, from the era of high industrialism between the World Wars through, and beyond, the nuclear age. Trust in the transformative social powers of technology was promoted most consistently in North America by a handful of self-identified “technocrats”, identified by John M. Jordan as the most radical of a wave of progressive technologists.2 Centered initially on groups associated with autodidact engineer Howard Scott (1890-1970), the nascent concept was later refined and championed through the speech-making of physicist-administrator Alvin Weinberg (1915-2006) from the 1960s who dubbed it “the technological fix”. The time frame, historical correlations and methodology of this study are noteworthy extensions of prior researches. Scott and Weinberg are both well known to historians of the twentieth century in the distinctive contexts of interwar Technocracy and postwar nuclear power, respectively, but they and their organizations have previously been studied History and Technology 33 (2017) “Technological parables and iconic illustrations: American Technocracy and the rhetoric of the technological fix” 2 separately and over the periods of their greatest public prominence, and with attention to more diffuse themes. 3 The present paper instead begins from such familiar but segregated accounts to trace the intersecting professional activities of these key promoters over some nine decades. Its focus is not the flowering and decline of a political movement, or of societal experimentation with novel energy supplies. Instead, the work specifically tracks the promotion of engineering solutions for societal problems, a notion that was condensed into popular faith in technological fixes. The research is based on hitherto unavailable archival holdings that chronicle this broad timespan via a variety of unpublished correspondence, speeches, exhibition materials and limited-circulation texts. Importantly, the archives of regional Technocracy chapters extend some thirty years beyond the death of their founder to the end of the twentieth century, and document how narratives about the societal power of technology mutated during the postScott era for members and their targeted audiences. Similarly, the unpublished papers of Alvin Weinberg provide significant insights into how his private views and public addresses about technology altered over the latter decades of his career. The collections reveal how, in both contexts, their creators dedicated unusual attention to condensing and communicating their claims. These textual and illustrative materials consequently provide privileged access to evolving notions of technological fixes and to the development of influential rhetorical practices. 4 Indeed, careful attention to the nature of this discourse, and its orientation toward wider culture, is at the methodological center of this piece.5 Focusing on a close-reading of the speeches, articles and illustrations employed by both Scott and Weinberg, I argue that the techniques of popularization adopted by them were markedly different from traditional engineering communications. This rhetorical interpretation illustrates how their style of dissemination, as much as the rationale of their arguments, promoted cultural confidence in technological fixes. The work argues that self-evident and simple examples were presented as easily-absorbed tales that reshaped the radical discourse of interwar technocracy into a style of communication amenable to post-Second World War policymaking and public understandings of science and technology. Key determinants in this transition were the characters of Howard Scott and Alvin Weinberg as energetic missionaries, and the form and content of their rhetoric, which supported a form of persuasion more akin to religious discourse. The resonances between expressions of technological confidence, social progress and religious faith had been remarked as early as the 1920s, with Dora Russell, for example, linking American industrial zeal (“the dogmas of machine-worshippers”) with the social ideals of the Russian revolution.6 Both the ideological and theological connotations of this conviction, and more particularly the style of communication by which it was promoted, are threads interwoven through this paper. It focuses on how the deceptively discrete and simple claim was proselytized to influence wider cultural creeds. Scott and Weinberg preached tales of wise technological problem-solving to broad audiences. Their typical narrative structure resembled a parable, and iconic graphics replaced detailed illustrations. Recounting universalized tales of engineering authority and honed by years of repetition, the sparse narratives and concrete examples attracted successive waves of receptive audience. The timescale, comparative approach, and attention to the style of dissemination to broad audiences argue that faith in the progressive nature of technologies was not limited to a naïve period of early engagement, but became a confidence embedded throughout modern culture by the late twentieth century