David Edgerton

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Professor David Edgerton

-]David Edgerton also shows how British intellectuals came to think of the state .... ‘Science and Technology: David Edgerton interviewed by Anthony Seldon’, ..

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「科技、軍火工業與經濟發展」David Edgerton工作坊已結束。當代雜誌配合出刊專輯，向隅的朋友可在
【當代雜誌】2002四月號(第176期) 見到李尚仁、吳泉源、林玉萍、陳信行等教授於工作坊發表之文章.

The ideas interview: David Edgerton

New technology is not always the best technology, argues this historian. The rickshaw is just as important as the jumbo jet. By John Sutherland

• The Guardian, Tuesday 1 August 2006
• Article history

David Edgerton is a historian of technology who has made it his mission to shake us out of conventional thinking about the state-of-the-art machinery which - we fondly imagine - runs our modern world. Much of it is less modern than we like to believe, so Edgerton's forthcoming book is called The Shock of the Old. In it he makes the case for the rickshaw, the condom, the horse and the sewing machine being as central to where we are, and where we're going, as the microchip. Where technology is concerned, Edgerton argues, "We live in a world of old and new that doesn't conform to cliches" - particularly the cliche he calls, venomously, "passe futurism".

The book is sprinkled with such posers as "the condom or the aeroplane - which is more important?" Is he really serious? I ask. Is there not a category error here?

"The important idea", he replies, "is that we must rethink what we mean and understand by the term 'technology'. When we picture it we typically focus on innovation. The new. We think of one-way, progressive timelines, dates of 'invention' and 'first use'. Hence if you go to certain countries in the so-called undeveloped world and ask them if they have any technology they will ruefully answer 'no'. By which they mean they haven't invented anything important. I would maintain that's a very odd definition of technology because it's neither a definition that looks at what matters, technologically, nor does it focus on historically significant inventions."

Another of Edgerton's unsettling examples is between the rickshaw and the jumbo jet. One doesn't blot out the significance of the other, he argues, simply because Wikipedia identifies the chief designer of the Boeing 747 (Joe Sutter), and records that the big bird came into service in 1970. No one, of course, knows when the rickshaw was invented - except that it was long ago, and far away.

"Right", Edgerton agrees, adding, "The one doesn't blot out the other except in the history books. Those history books are derived largely from propaganda about technology. So in the 40s everyone was excited about supersonic flight and atomic power, and in today's history books we continue to think of that era being dominated by those technologies. It wasn't. One might more correctly think of the 40s as a time of tanks, aeroplanes, cars, coal and wheat and pig farming. We inhabit a world where what I call 'the futurism of the past' falsely conditions our conception of the past."

The title of his forthcoming book is a sardonic echo of Robert Hughes's The Shock of the New, about the modernist revolution in art. Edgerton presumably thinks that in technology the old masters are as important as the avant garde? "Absolutely", he says. "The point about Hughes and The Shock of the New is that there was a lot of novelty at the beginning of the century, across the board, and that excitement about novelty has played itself through into how we think about technology."

It is Edgerton's view that we should not differentiate, or apply judgments, to old and new technology. It's not, as he sees it, that the old is always with us. We rediscover and redevelop old stuff as much as we develop new stuff. One can see certain technologies disappearing, then reappearing. "For example," he says, "the guillotine was used much more in France in the 1940s than it was in the 1840s or even the 1790s."

More examples follow: "The condom decreased in use in the 60s with the arrival of the pill, and came back into use on a massive scale globally in the 80s. Cable TV was a declining industry in the 50s and the 60s and re-emerged big-time in the 90s. Ships are the most important agent of globalisation - but we think of them as a very old-fashioned technology. Yesterday's thing. Which, of course, they are. But ships have been transformed so as to make the carriage of freight around the world virtually costless - which is why we can import so many cheap goods from China. Radio is still listened to and TV is still watched but when we think about 'technology' we'll think only about the internet.

"What I'm aiming to do is to rethink the place of technology in history; to make it accessible to ordinary historical questioning and investigation. At the moment our understanding of technology is driven by an obsession with glamorous innovation which systematically narrows our vision and obliterates any comprehensive account of technology's past. This tendency is exacerbated by narratives which repeat themselves over time, irrespective of what actually happened in history. So we have the steamship, the railway, the aeroplane, the radio, the internet all portrayed as bringing about world peace or breaking down frontiers and barriers between nations. The end result? We are blinded by cliches when we turn our mind to technology. If we stop thinking about technology, as we have conventionally conceived it, and think instead about 'things', we might better grasp the complexities involved. We might even decommission the word 'technology' which has an inbuilt futurist spin."

So if we tore down the veil of cliches, then, does Edgerton believe that we would "invent" better, so to speak? Or "use" technology better? "Undeniably. There is a huge payoff from novelty and innovation. But there is a worldwide consensus that certain areas are sexiest and should be concentrated on. In fact, we should invent wherever we can. We should, for example, apply ourselves to inventing new modes of public transport, we should invent new methods of cutting metal, we should invent new techniques of extruding plastic."

Mule-drawn buses down the red lanes of Piccadilly, is that what you have in mind? "The invention of new kinds of animal-drawn equipment for agriculture in poor countries is already being done. And people are looking to the past for older technologies that might be of use in the sustainable exploitation of natural resources, minimising damage to the environment."

· David Edgerton teaches history of technology at Imperial College London. The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900 will be published by Profile Books in January 2007.