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

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

Acknowledgements

I thank Martin Collins and two anonymous reviewers for very constructive comments.

Notes

1. Jordan, Machine-Age Ideology; Segal, Technological Utopianism; and Brick, Transcending Capitalism. By contrast, Edwin Layton argues in his revised 1971 The Revolt of the Engineers that few American engineers during the ‘progressive era’ were radicals. On varied disciplinary perspectives, see Misa et al. (eds.). Modernity and Technology; Hard and Jamison, The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology.

2. Jordan, Machine-Age Ideology, 212–14.

3. Prior accounts of American Technocracy have generally focused on the organization’s rise to popularity and fall from attention before the Second World War, neglecting interactions and influences later in the century. Jordan’s excellent account of industrial ideology centers on the interwar period, but does not focus on Technocracy and its particular claims about technology. Similarly, most scholarly attention to Weinberg has concerned his role in nuclear engineering and policy (e.g. Johnston, The Neutron’s Children).

4. The principal sources for this paper are the Technocracy Fonds at the University of Alberta archives and the University of British Columbia archives (henceforth UAA and UBCA, respectively), rich in late-twentieth century documents from Technocracy regional chapters and deposited up to the early 2000s. Weinberg’s unclassified papers are divided between the University of Tennessee Modern Political Archives, Baker Center for Public Policy, Knoxville, and a more extensive complementary collection at the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge, Tennessee (henceforth MPA and CMOR, respectively), with the latter first made available in 2016.

5. On discourses directed towards experts, see, e.g. Overington, “The Scientific Community as Audience” and Winsor, Writing Like an Engineer.

6. Russell, The Religion of the Machine Age, 202. See also Noble, The Religion of Technology.

7. Scott, “Origins of Technical Alliance & Technocracy.”

8. Technical Alliance, “The Technical Alliance: What It Is, and What It Proposes”. UBCA RBSC-ARC-1549 Box 1.

9. Akin, Technocracy and the American Dream, 28–9. For a supporter’s account, see Parrish, An Outline of Technocracy.

10. Two articles appeared in the IWW periodical: Scott, “The Scourge of Politics in a Land of Manna”; and “Political Schemes in Industry.”

11. Wood, “The Birth of the Technical Alliance,” 16.

12. e.g. Technocracy Inc, Technocracy: Technological Continental Design.

13. Streetcar safety arguably was driven not by responsible innovation but by the pressure of financial losses to transport companies to compensate injured passengers and by impending government-mandated design changes. ‘Open platforms gave way to platforms with gates, gates to fully enclosed platforms. Faced with the threat of government action, companies took preemptive action … In a single month in mid-1894, the patent office awarded twenty patents to inventors of fenders and guards …’ [Welke, Recasting American Liberty, 30–1]. Patents included Rowntree and Spencer, “Combined Street-car Pneumatic Door Device and Brake-release Mechanism” and Beck, “Steps for Railway and Street Cars.”

14. Similar designs of the period included the Peter Witt trolley and J. G. Brill streetcar designs ca. 1916; see Middleton, The Time of the Trolley. Engineering rationalism was nevertheless not deterministic: older open platform designs such as the cable-drawn cars used in San Francisco co-existed with the safety designs adopted in other cities, and horse-drawn trolleys worked alongside electric streetcars in New York through the 1920s.

15. Chase, The Tragedy of Waste. See also Westbrok, “Tribune of the Technostructure”, who coins the phrase ‘technocratic progressive’ to describe him.

16. On Taylorism, see Kanigel, The One Best Way.

17. Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity; and Edgerton, The Shock of the Old.

18. e.g. Wilson et al., The Machine Age in America; and Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age.

19. The term ‘technocracy’ was coined independently by several individuals, notably in 1919 [Smyth, “Letter to the Editor”]. The term also gained currency in other countries, notably interwar Germany; see, for example, Lenk, Technokratie Als Ideologie.

20. Scott, “Interview, St Louis Post-Dispatch” (emphasis added).

21. The most thorough account of this period is Elsner, Messianic Scientism. On the later history of the organization, see Adair, The Technocrats.

22. Scott, ‘Radio Address, Hotel Pierre.”

23. For a well-rounded contemporary journalistic investigation of Scott’s career, claims and philosophy, see Raymond, What is Technocracy?

24. Scott, “Public Lecture by Howard Scott.” On technology-related accidents, which became an important rhetorical element for Howard Scott, see Burnham, Accident Prone.

25. Scott, “Birthday Talk by Howard Scott.” The replacement of overt force by calm rationalism in redirecting behaviors is characteristic of the claims of behavioral psychologists between and after the Wars. B. F. Skinner’s (1904–1990) ‘radical behaviorism’ was then current, informing his novel Walden Two and his subsequent text Science and Human Behavior. The technocratic and behaviorist devotion to quantification and rejection of psychological interpretation have evident links with logical positivism, then at its zenith for American philosophers of science.

26. Scott, “Design, Direction or Disaster.”

27. These trends concern the central claims of technocracy: the rise of production, consumption and waste, the precipitous drop in employment owing to increasing efficiency, and the consequently inevitable collapse of the ‘Price System’, or conventional free-market economics – a term popularized by the Technical Alliance’s theorist, Veblen, in his Engineers and the Price System. Graphs are prominent in successive editions of the Technocracy Study Course and in vue-graph transparencies and exhibition placards employed between the 1930s and 1990s. For collections of exhibition and lecture materials, see UBCA RBSC-ARC-1549 Box 2 and UAA 96-123-8.

28. Technocracy Inc, The Words and Wisdom of Howard Scott.

29. Meade, Blackberry Winter, 195–8 (emphasis added).

30. Hubbert, “Lesson 22: Industrial Design and Operating Characteristics,” in: (ed.), Technocracy Study Course, 242–68; quotation 242. The example is reminiscent of Winner’s discussion in ‘Do artifacts have politics?’.

31. Huxley, Brave New World. British biologist Julian Huxley (1887–1955), brother of the author, vaunted technocratic ideals that were satirized in the novel [Armytage, The Rise of the Technocrats, 274].

32. Hubbert, Technocracy Study Course, with successive editions in 1937, 1938 and 1940 and multiple reprintings.

33. The original source and exemplars of the illustration have not been located and appear to be unknown by current administrators, but probably date from the mid-1930s when Technocracy Inc generated publicity materials. The top two vehicles are consistent with electric trolley car designs in operation between the 1890s and 1910s. The bottom-most form could be as early as the Peter Witt trolley of 1916 but is reminiscent of the 1936 PCC design. Streetcars increasingly were replaced by buses from the 1930s, however, and disappeared almost completely from North American cities by 1960.

34. George Wright to author, email, 26 February 2016. The iconic illustrations generated by the ‘Energy Survey’ of the Technical Alliance and subsequent research by Technocracy Inc appear repeatedly in presentations to local audiences, public exhibits, and the higher-budget regional publications (e.g. Technocracy, The Technocrat, The Northwest Technocrat, and Technocracy Digest, each published from the mid-1930s). Fewer illustrations accompanied the typically typewritten and mimeographed newsletters that included, at best, hand-sketched line drawings. Among the most common illustrations were graphs of rising production, energy consumption and technology capacity such as railway miles; a hierarchical organization chart of the planned ‘North American Technate’; a map of the area of its intended coverage, consisting of Canada, the USA, Caribbean, and Central and northern South America; and, the ‘Energy Certificate’, an IBM-like card intended to replace money with an accounting of energy allocation. UAA Technocracy fonds.

35. Urquart, “Ring Out the Old, Ring in the New.”

36. Bounds, “What’s Yours is Mine,” 7.

37. Palm, “Why North America Faces Social Change,” 9.

38. ‘L.L.B.’, “Subsidies and Sabotage,” 22.

39. The use of outmoded graphics was not likely intended as nostalgic appeals to long-standing members, but instead reflected lack of contemporary research by the organization and the image’s satisfactory effectiveness in attracting fresh audiences.

40. See, Baran, “Review of Meier.”

41. Meier, Science and Economic Development and Modern Science and the Human Fertility Problem.

42. Oak Ridge Operations Manager, ‘Dr Alvin A. Weinberg security clearance meeting 29 Sep 1948’, 29 September 1948, MPA Box 14, Folder 4.

43. Weinberg, “Beyond the Technological Fix,” 1; The First Nuclear Era, 150; original emphasis.

44. Weinberg to H. Brooks, letter, 17 June 1966. CMOR Cab 5 Drawer 4, Chron 1966–2.

45. For a lucid exposition of his views, see his collected essays and autobiography, Weinberg, Nuclear Reactions and The First Nuclear Era.

46. Scott, “History and Purpose of Technocracy,” 9.

47. Scott, “History and Purpose,” 11.

48. ‘Social engineering’, for Weinberg, was a catch-all and rather derisory term that included education, sociologically-informed interventions, legislation aimed at controlling behaviors, and even religious ideology. By contrast, J. M. Jordan employs the term to connote conventional engineers solving social problems.

49. Weinberg, “Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?” 5.

50. Scott, “Public Address by Howard Scott.”

51. Weinberg, “Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?” 7.

52. Nader to Weinberg, letter, 22 Oct 1966. CMOR Cab 7 Drawer 1, Nader file; Weinberg to Nader, letter, 7 Jun 1966, CMOR Cab 5 Drawer 4, Chron 1966–2.

53. Weinberg, “Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?” 5.

54. e.g. Weinberg and Bresee, “On the Air-conditioning of Low-cost Housing”, unpublished report, 16 Jan 1968, CMOR Cab 5 Drawer 4, Chron 1968–1.

55. Veblen, “A Memorandum on a Practical Soviet of Technicians.”

56. Wood, “The Birth of the Technical Alliance.”

57. Ivie, America Must Show the Way, quotation 21.

58. Weinberg, “Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?” 5 and 8. See also “Social Problems and National Socio-technical Institutions.”

59. In this respect, the communications of Scott and Weinberg were similar to those of F. W. Taylor, whose case for Scientific Management was founded on empirical but anecdotally recounted case studies.

60. Weinberg’s first 1966 essay on technological fixes appeared in at least eight journals ranging across physics, engineering, science policy, behavioral psychology and social science over the next two years, and anthologized in numerous books thereafter. On its genesis, see Johnston, “Alvin Weinberg.”

61. Elsner, Messianic Scientism, 65.

62. Scott, “Origins of Technical Alliance & Technocracy.”

63. Dickinson, Technocracy Digest.

64. “Symbolization of Technocracy”, CHQ circular, November 1940, UAA 69-123-1 folder 5; Smith, “Symbolization Drives.”

65. A film of the event made for internal consumption documents its meticulous organization, and describes a ‘long line of grey cars … extending nearly ten miles back from the Canadian border’. Technocracy Inc, “Operation Columbia.”

66. Adair, The Technocrats, 101.

67. e.g. Technocracy Inc, “Operation Bakersfield”; “Operation Ohio Valley.”

68. Hubbert to W. T. Thagard and Weinberg, letter, 19 Sep 1961, CMOR Cab 6 Drawer 1, Hubbert file; Hubbert to Weinberg, letter, 31 Mar 1967, CMOR Cab 5 Drawer 4, Chron 1967-1, mentioning face-to-face encounters and topics of energy production and national resources.

69. Google Ngrams analysis of key terms. Michel et al., “Quantitative Analysis of Culture.”

70. The principal publicist of Technocracy Inc in the post-Scott period actively sought to correct the conflation of the characteristics of his organization with other expressions of technologist-dominated governing elites such as the Kremlin. See, for example, John A. Taube to S. Bialer and J. Afferica, letter, 4 Aug 1986, UAA 96-123-5 folder 149.

71. The course materials long served as the standard instruction for members of the organization, being revised five years after Howard Scott’s death as Technocracy: Technological Social Design, revised and retitled Technocracy: Technological Continental Design (emphasis added) and reformatted for internet distribution in 2004. The streetcar example is incorporated for the first time as a graphic in the shorter post-1970 versions.

72. John A. Taube to I. Asimov, letter, 6 Feb 1980, UAA 96-123-5 folder 143; to B. Bova, letter, 18 Aug 1982, UAA 96-123-5 folder 146. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”; “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor.”

73. Hardin to Taube, letter, 18 Oct 1981, UAA 96-123-5 folder 144; Robert Shaeffer to J. A. Taube, letter, 11 Oct 1983, UA 96-123-5 folder 146. Media coverage increasingly portrayed technocracy as an outmoded faith preserved by old men [Livingston, “Technocracy Still Lives”; Maloney, “Technocracy Dreams at the Fringe”; Hawthorn, “Diehard Few Keep Utopian Dream Alive”].

74. Walt Fryers to J. A. Taube, letter, 22 Feb 1988, UAA Box 96-123-4 Item 135.

75. Weinberg, The First Nuclear Era; “Technology and Democracy”.