Review of the Book

American Genesis
by Thomas Hughes

Edward J. Dodson

[A paper prepared in partial fulfillment of course requirements, Temple University, 1989]

Thomas Hughes writes, in American Genesis of a society increasingly dependent upon yet distant from the knowledge makers engaged in the work of science and technology. As an historian who specializes in putting to paper the story of technological advances and those who make them, he details successes and failures and assesses the impact of achievements on others, then and now. He traces the gradual integration and development of the grand systems of the modern era -- electrical and nuclear power, transportation and communication. In this parallel effort at analysis he proceeds in an interdisciplinary manner, combining the focus of sociologist with that of historian. For reasons to be elaborated on below, he is much the better historian than visionary in this work.

Of particular importance to Hughes is the rapid replacement beginning in the late nineteenth century of human scale technology and systems with bigness. He describes what appears to be an inevitable process of systems integration within which government and industrial empires acquire quasi-monopolistic power to influence and direct the actions of individuals who naively think of themselves as independent agents He describes entire societies struggling to adjust to a world changing in the face of centralizing political power and the use of advancing technology to harness nature. The United States, its land mass opened for settlement and ripe for exploitation, yielded to the era's robber barons in finance, transportation, extraction, power generation and city building. Parallel to this rapid expansion and changing political climate arose new markets and new large-scale sources of consumption for capital infrastructure.

In this quest for dominance over markets and over nature, Hughes sees a partnership arising between the technologists and the entrepreneurs. He describes the late nineteenth century as a period during which technology met old needs while creating new ones simultaneously. Incremental change came first out of practical problem-solving by mechanics, some of whom as inventors would later work alone or in association within a small cadre of like-minded problem-solvers. They are described as often self-taught or acquiring technical knowledge by apprenticeship, but always curious, creative and determined. As the turn of the century neared, a new generation of problem-solver would emerge from the universities with specialized degrees in chemistry, mathematics, or physics. A small number of university-trained scientists join the inventors, providing technical and experimental support to Edison and others; however, by the 1930s the independents of Edison's stock are far outnumbered by scientists, researchers and engineers working directly for government or industrial giants. In the meantime, the reputation of such experts as master builders has taken them into Soviet Russia and Weimar Germany to replicate the systems of production that have catapulted the United States to the status of an industrial power.

The early independents practice both as professionals, earning their entire living from the licensing of patents on their designs, and as amateurs who struggle to bring breakthrough inspirations into reality -- often without much thought to commercial success. Edison and Sperry dominate the first group, the Wright Brothers the second. The university-trained scientists and researchers spend most of their energy experimenting and documenting the theory behind existing technology. Following each technological breakthrough, they are forced back to the theoretical drawing board to explain why something thought impossible was achieved. For this reason, scientists were not viewed by the independents as serious competitors; the scientist would lead the field only after abandoning conservative approaches to theoretical work.

Nor did Edison and his counterparts see the "industrial inventors and engineers" as a source of much competition. As Hughes writes:

Sperry knew that the problems attacked by industrial inventors and engineers were usually ones of refinement, especially suited to collective responses by well-equipped research teams, . . [p.70]

Freedom to choose which problems they wanted to work on was extremely important not only to the independent inventors but also the university professors, most of whom spent their careers in low-paying isolation. Only gradually would industry and government find their training and expertise of practical value.

As the world's nation-states armed in anticipation of the twentieth century's first experience in global warfare, the so-called gilded age of technological advances ends. The surviving independents, the industrial researchers and engineers and the university professors increasingly dedicate themselves to large-scale systems development. The interests of the State and its ability to direct resources to the military became the catalyst for a systems approach to research and development. And, as Hughes describes in some detail, in the United States no individual played a more important role as "a harbinger of the future" than Elmer Sperry, whose work on gyroscopes and automated controls set the stage for the post-Second World War development of computers. Meanwhile, Henry Ford revolutionized automobile production by the design and continuous refinement of mass production techniques; and, Samuel Insull similarly uses systems integration to develop a widespread network of electrical power stations in the Midwest. These achievements have a far greater impact on people in other countries than does the socio-political system of the United States. These are centrally-controlled systems that prove tremendously productive (if not always adaptive) and, therefore, appeal to political leaders such as Lenin and Stalin in their drive for state-socialism.

A secondary theme also emerges from Hughes as he traces the continuous legal battles fought between inventor and inventor and between inventor and corporation over patent rights. Knowledge proves to be very difficult to keep from those of equally inquisitive minds. Yet, knowledge in modern Western societies is sanctioned as property based on rights of first discovery; or, rather, rights of first patenting. Those who were first with discoveries fought to protect their legal rights against patent infringement; everyone else fought to overturn or circumvent any legal restrictions on the use of commercially-valuable knowledge. Monopoly rather than competition to bring the consumer the best product at the lowest possible price was too often the objective even of the independents. Hughes describes very clearly how the industrial giants and utility companies maneuvered to acquire control over any process that might compete with those in which they had already invested. Efficiencies, as proffered by Frederick W. Taylor, were welcomed by industrial overseers only to the extent they enhanced control over labor costs and thereby increased profits. Taylor's insights into the improvement of conditions for the masses and for the conservation of natural resources were visionary but largely ignored in practice. Nevertheless, both Ford and Insull were instrumental in bringing low cost mobility and energy to a significant percentage of the U.S. population. There is an unresolved dichotomy surrounding these systems builders -- the mixture of unrelenting drive for power and control offset (usually later in life) by humanitarian concerns -- perhaps best explained simply by the complexity of human motivation.

The relentless expansion of systems moves forward, Hughes tells us, faced with only feeble opposition until the activism of the civil rights and peace movements in the 1960s, which added numerical (and eventually financial) strength to the anti-establishment counterculture. From this arose, as Hughes details, a growing constituency within the intellectual community for the "unorthodox" development of "appropriate" rather than simply massive applications of technology. Hughes nevertheless sees few signs that such agitation is in any meaningful way challenging the "powerful vested interests" dominating and dominated by "large technological systems."

It is true that citizen-based agitation for systemic and institutional changes that promise more human scale and environmentally sensitive technologies have only recently gathered real momentum and political power. The same is true for efforts to more appropriately distribute the benefits of productivity gains achieved through scientific management.

However, much has changed within a very short time. Corporate executives are going to prison for deliberate violation of anti-pollution laws; some of the fastest growing companies in the world are those specializing in the technologies of pollution control and waste disposal or recycling; and, the not inconsequential investment resources of foundations and some wealthy individuals are being redirected away from corporations engaged in building weapons systems or that are known to be environmentally irresponsible. I would also have liked to see Hughes give at least a passing treatment to the growth in employee participation in ownership and management of many large companies. From the late 1950s on, Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler argued persuasively that the problem with capitalism was simply that too few of us enjoyed its benefits. Today, nearly every company of any size has some type of employee stock ownership plan, others have become totally employee-owned. Corporations striving to compete successfully in today's global markets are listening to the message of people like Tom Peters, who point to hierarchical structures and top-down management as the sure path to failure.

Change has occurred rapidly not only in our technological systems but, partly as a result of technology, in the system of transnational citizen-based power. Governments and would-be private monopolists are finding it increasingly difficult to protect their interests from both competitive and citizen pressures. Green Peace, Amnesty International and the Environmental Defense Fund are only three examples of well-financed groups able to dedicate considerable time and resources to countering the "power hungry". The most advanced technology of our era has, in fact, become widely available to the non-technologists throughout the world in the form of the personal computer.

Although created by individuals who continued the legacy of the independent inventor, the world's largest high-technology corporations have feverishly competed for market share, driving down prices and increasing capacity not dreamed of even a decade ago. In the process of making computing power available to almost everyone of more than very modest means, power has also been diffused. Today, the creative individual has access to a tool for storing and analyzing information, for monitoring and forecasting and for systems design that twenty-five years ago not even the largest university, corporation or government had at its disposal. The accumulated knowledge of all of science and technology is fast becoming commonly accessible and beyond the control of large institutions. Add to this the proliferation of the satellite dish in backyards all around the globe and we see a world where the democratization of knowledge power makes the concept of sovereign political power more illusion than reality. Electronics and market forces have also taken from government the monopoly over money and credit that for centuries allowed princes, dictators and parliaments to borrow and spend with impunity. Yet, Hughes still wonders whether "supranational systems will embody the controls, tight coupling, and hierarchical characteristics of modern systems or whether they will incorporate in ingenious and subtle ways values of the counter-, or post-modern, culture of recent decades."[p.472) Had this book been published in 1965, this question would seem appropriate; published in 1989, Hughes seems anachronistic.[n1] To be sure, technological advance and systems building possesses its own momentum, but that momentum -- by Hughes' own admission -- is directed and nurtured by socio-political arrangements and institutions. For most of history the content of such arrangements and institutions has been to secure and maintain privilege. Rhetoric aside, the tendency (if the not the absolute extent) of all forms of government has been to sanction privilege. Eventually, the consolidation of privilege becomes sufficiently oppressive to arouse the citizenry into a clamor for reform. Perhaps what I see differently from Hughes is that the momentum of the counterculture has already created a new culture that is successfully competing with the old. All around us the status quo is crumbling and technology, once thought to be the primary instrument of privilege, has instead democratized knowledge and shifted power away from highly centralized systems of control.

Privilege is socio-political in origin and continues to pervade all societies. Yet, once we come to grips with privilege and move against it, the creative and competitive forces that have in the past been unleashed will prove all the more powerful in expanding rather than contracting the human potential. In my view, the ease with which knowledge is transferred today is the "counterforce" Hughes sees as necessary to challenge the conservative systems so long in place. We could yet blunder into oblivion before the rising tide of transnationalism weakens and replaces ideology and nation-state building as the basis for our relations with one another on a global level; however, it is clear to me that the centrally-controlled systems -- both political and economic and social -- are in decline. With this, I gather, Hughes would not be in agreement.[n2]

INSTRUCTOR'S COMMENTS:

[n1] Historians don't reach quick decisions.
[n2] Though he would share this wish.