Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity Read online

  Our Own Devices is thus an exploration not only of inventive genius but also of user ingenuity. It explores why we experience so many positive as well as negative unintended consequences. In Why Things Bite Back, I identified a class of problems that I called revenge effects, the side of technology that undermines its reason for existence. Some computer programs designed to prevent crashes, for example, have been known to cause them. But technologies can have equally unexpected benefits. Apparently frivolous ideas can have productive consequences. The chemistry of attaching oxide particles to magnetic tape was a by-product of efforts in the Weimar Republic to bind gold leaf more effectively to fashionably decadent black Russian cigarettes. More recently, the control room of a major neutrino experiment at the particle research center Fermilab near Chicago was inspired by the round subterranean den of the Teletubbies children’s television series, familiar to parents and grandparents among the laboratory’s staff. Scientists at Silicon Graphics have trained digital cameras on the circulating blobs in Lava lamps to generate truly random numbers, which are essential to many computer tasks but cannot be produced by computer circuits alone.10

  This book starts by looking at how objects complement body techniques (as the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss originally called them), arguing with examples from warfare to music that some of the most important innovations have been less in the invention of things than in the development of new usages.

  The core of the book considers body techniques and technologies through history, starting with the first technology most people encounter, infant feeders. It then starts, literally at the ground, by examining the simplest form of foot covering, the sandal—specifically, the thong sandal familiar to antiquity and spread around the world from Asia after World War II. It continues with the twentieth century’s most characteristic footwear, the running shoe, and its association with styles of movement. The following chapters move to the back and its relationship to seating. The chair is an originally Mediterranean and Middle Eastern creation that has displaced older forms of seating only recently in most of the world. The idea of designing a chair for work emerged only in the nineteenth century and is still one of the greatest challenges for designers. Reclining chairs, the subject of the next chapter, are not always fashionable but are usually well designed for what they do. The chapter on them shows how a technology first associated with aristocratic leisure and then with high modern style and health became a symbol of self-indulgence and obesity in popular culture.

  The breakthrough technology for the hands in the last two centuries has been the keyboard, which has not only displaced the pen and the pencil as a writing instrument but has changed human control of many other processes. The chapter on the musical keyboard looks at how styles of playing and the principles of making instruments interacted. Its counterpart on the text keyboard shows how typists contributed as much as the original inventors to the definition of the technology.

  What the piano did for music and the hands in the nineteenth century, mass-produced spectacles did for the eyes. The chapter on eyeglasses explores how their existence depended less on the understanding of optics than on the needs of society’s growing literacy; yet the explosion of reading material in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has in turn made us increasingly dependent on eyeglasses. The helmet, which started the first arms race in the ancient Middle East, is now as much an athletic as a military object, and is even an orthopedic appliance for babies.

  The epilogue considers trends in body technology. Wearable and implantable devices have lost some of their cachet since the late 1990s; even a pioneer of the cyborg lifestyle has misgivings. Direct modification of the body itself—through exercise machinery, diet, medication, and in the future even regeneration of teeth and organs—is a possibility. And mobile devices are promoting the humblest digit to a new dignity, suggesting that there can be happy unintended consequences, too.

  Like Why Things Bite Back, this book is not mainly for specialists in the history, philosophy, or sociology of technology. It is an exploratory work for all who are curious about familiar things. My goal is to provoke new ways of looking at the commonplace. For I agree with Oscar Wilde that the true mystery of the world is not the invisible but the visible.

  My first debt is to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which gave me the initial support for this work. I am grateful to the staff, to my colleagues there, and to the interns who helped me with so much intelligence and enthusiasm, Meryl Hooker and Christopher Garces. I also appreciate the hospitality of Princeton University, in particular John Suppe, S. George Philander, and Robert Phinney in the Department of Geosciences; Michael Wood, Nigel Smith, and William Howarth in the Department of English; and Beth Harrison, the English Department manager. At the Princeton University Library, I especially thank Mary George, Kiyoko Heineken, Elaine Zampini, Stephen Ferguson, and the Interlibrary Loan staff. More than once the Princeton Office of Information Technology (OIT) helped rescue my programs and data from the frailties of hardware. I have also appreciated the help of Roy Goodman at the American Philosophical Society, and the wonderful reference staffs of the Princeton and Plainsboro Public Libraries, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and (not least) Mary Carter-Hepworth of the Albertson Library, Boise State University.

  Though this is a new work, I have also appreciated the encouragement of the magazine and journal editors with whom I have worked on pieces related to it: Jay Tolson (now at U.S. News & World Report) and Steven Lagerfeld at the Wilson Quarterly; John Bethell, John Rosenberg, Christopher Reed, and Jean Martin at Harvard Magazine; Victoria Pope and Tim Appenzeller at U.S. News & World Report; Luke Mitchell at the former Industry Standard (now at Harper’s); and Jerilou Hammett at Designer/Builder.

  At the National Museum of American History, I have been helped greatly by Arthur Molella and Claudine Klose of the Lemelson Center, and by John Fleckner and the staff of the Smithsonian Archives Center. Stuart Pyhrr and Donald LaRocca of the Metropolitan Museum of Art shared their deep knowledge and the awesome heritage of the Arms and Armor Department. Rolf Fehlbaum, Alexander von Vegesack, and Andreas Nutz of Vitra were most generous with both material support and encouragement, as were Bruno Haldner, Matthias Götz, and Matthias Buschle of the Museum für Gestaltung in Basel and Kenneth Boff and his colleagues at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Special thanks are also due to Walter Bradford of the U.S. Army Historical Center, Gail Bardhan of the Corning Glass Museum, Barbara Williams of the Shoe Museum of the Pennsylvania College of Podiatric Medicine, Marilyn Hofer and Travis Stewart of the New-York Historical Society, Christopher Mount of the Museum of Modern Art, Judith A. Carr of La-Z-Boy, Robert Viol of Herman Miller, Wayne T. Stephens of Barcalounger, Greg Lucchese of Domore, Scott Underwood of IDEO, and the staffs of Steelcase and the Bata Shoe Museum.

  I am also grateful to the many experts who responded to my queries, by electronic mail, by telephone, and in person: John S. Allen, Kenneth L. Ames, Susan M. Andrews, Jed Ballard, Edward B. Becker, Russell Bienenstock, G. A. Bettcher, William J. Bodziak, John T. Bonner, C. Loring Brace, Joseph L. Bruneni, Randy Cassingham, Peter Cavanagh, Perry R. Cook, Galen Cranz, Marvin Dainoff, Katherine A. Dettwyler, James Dickinson, Niels Diffrient, Clive Edwards, Jay M. Enoch, Jerry Epperson, Darroll Erickson, M.D., Peter Fletcher, Brent Gillespie, Sander Gilman, Edwin M. Good, Richard Gradkowski, Katharine C. Grier, Vincent Ilardi, Tim Ingold, Karl Kroemer, Walter Karcheski, Jr., Charles Letocha, M.D., Hayden Letchworth, Linda Lewis, John Logan, John Ma, Alan Mann, Russell Maulitz, M.D., Phillip Nutt, Josiah Ober, Scot Ober, Ron Overs, Charles Perry, Trevor Pinch, Clark Rogers, Paul Saenger, Steve Scott, Yoshiaki Shimizu, Fred Chris Smith, Heinrich von Staden, Valerie Steele, John Steigerwald, Manfred Steinfeld, Ko Tada, Neal Taslitz, Lara Tauritz, Johan Ullman, M.D., Michael Volk, Joshua Wallman, Emily Wilkinson, and Frank Wilson, M.D. My friend Charles Rippin has helped me on many points with great generosity. This can
only be a partial listing; I am humbled by how many busy people responded to my requests for help. The result owes much to them; any errors or omissions are my own responsibility.

  Without the encouragement and insight of my editor, Ashbel Green, and my literary agent, Peter L. Ginsberg, this book would not have come about. And on the personal side, the support of my family and the friendship of Barbara and Robert Freidin and Charles Creesy and Gretchen Oberfranc have helped sustain me.

  Finally, I want to remember three exceptional authors from my time as an editor at Princeton University Press, who became colleagues and friends: Thomas McMahon, Amos Funkenstein, and Gerald Geison. All three combined superb scholarship with deep humanity, and their loss is still felt by all who knew them.

  Edward Tenner

  Plainsboro, New Jersey

  August 2002

  CHAPTER ONE

  Technology, Technique,

  and the Body

  IN A GARY LARSON cartoon, a number of dogs are tinkering with building hardware at laboratory workbenches. The caption explains that they are striving to improve canine life by mastering the Doorknob Principle. What makes this funny is partly the idea of pooch scientists standing on their hind legs, manipulating screwdrivers and even microscopes. It recalls the long-discarded notion that we humans are the only tool-using animals. It points indirectly to the unique versatility of the human hand, with its range of grips, and the relative specialization of other creatures’ paws and claws.

  There is something even stranger than Larson’s image, though. Other animals have a surprising ability to manipulate human technology. Not all understand what people do with things, but they develop ways to work with human-made objects, and they transmit this knowledge socially. At the dawn of industrialization, the rats of early-nineteenth-century London, with no direct auditory or visual cues, had long known that water flowed through the lead pipes servicing houses. When sufficiently thirsty, they gnawed right through them. Unfortunately, by the 1830s the pipes sometimes contained gas; the holes left by the disappointed rodents added to the risk of explosions. (Rats also loved the wax covering early matches, brought them back to their dens, and ignited the phosphorus with their teeth, causing still more fires.)1

  Bears in Yosemite National Park have learned to twist open screw-top jars of peanut butter, to break into food lockers with a combination of paw and snout, and to raid Dumpsters through supposedly protective slots. Bears cooperate to defeat other human technology; sow bears appear to send cubs into branches to dislodge carefully cached food, and young bears learn from observation how to break open automobile doors and penetrate the flimsy barrier separating the backseat from the food the owners thought they were protecting in the trunk. According to park rangers, who call the practice clouting, bears recognize specific brands and models, for example Honda and Toyota sedans, that are most vulnerable to attack, and use similar techniques on each model. When a particular model and color yield a rich cache of food, bears begin to attack similar vehicles every night. Mother bears show cubs how to pry open rear side doors by bending the door frame with their claws until it becomes a platform for reaching the backseat and trunk partition. Bears also brace themselves against neighboring cars to break the windows of vans more readily.2

  Zoo officials “never use the words can’t and orangutan in the same sentence,” according to the comparative psychologist Benjamin Beck, a specialist in animal survival skills. A young orangutan in the San Diego Zoo became famous for unbolting the screening of his crib, removing the wires, and moving through the zoo nursery, unscrewing lightbulbs. According to Beck, an orangutan, unlike other great apes, understands what a tool like a screwdriver means in the human world and given the opportunity could use it to take its cage apart and escape. Other orangutans have learned to distinguish the faint sounds made by electrified barrier systems and to escape when they detect that the power is off.3

  It should not be surprising, then, that dogs also learn the Doorknob Principle. An innocent resident of Takoma Park, Maryland, was allegedly mauled by a Prince George’s County police dog in her own bed after it was sent in to look for a burglar in her basement apartment. It had gained access by turning a doorknob, which the woman has since replaced by a latch. Bizarre as these anecdotes appear, they make an important point. Those who create things, whether doorknobs or gas pipes, can only begin to imagine how they will be used. If we define technology as a modification of the environment, then we must recognize the complementary principle of technique: how that modification is used in performance. New objects change behavior, but not always as inventors and manufacturers imagine. And changes in behavior of people, as of bears and dogs, inspire new hardware, which in turn engenders more innovations.4

  TECHNOLOGY = TECHNIQUE?

  In many European languages the same term— la technique; die Technik — describes both things and practices. One of the most incisive and influential critics of technology, Jacques Ellul, argued powerfully that modern humanity is enmeshed in such omnipresent, interlocking technological institutions that technology and technique are inseparable. Ellul begins his most important work, The Technological Society, by insisting, against Lewis Mumford, that the machine is only a result of technique, not its source. Mumford established historical periods based on energy—hydraulic, coal, electrical; Ellul sought to understand the spirit behind the power sources and machinery. For him, technology was the product of the ancient Near East; in Western antiquity and medieval Christianity, it was always subordinated to other principles. Even the Renaissance and the seventeenth century pursued humanistic universality rather than technical proficiency; many supposedly practical books of this period lose the modern reader in digression and speculation. The universal application of technique began only with the eighteenth century and the French Revolution. Mechanization was only one consequence of “systematization, unification, and clarification,” equally reflected in the suppression of customary law by the Napoleonic Code. History and philosophy as we know them emerged as intellectual techniques. In fact, Ellul argues, industrialization followed rather than preceded these intellectual and cultural transformations. With the rapid industrial development of the nineteenth century—which Ellul does not attempt to explain—came a new relationship of technique to society: “a reality in itself, self-sufficient, with its own laws and determinations.” Political control of technique is an illusion. It is irreversible, “beyond good and evil,” not merely morally neutral but “the judge of what is moral, the creator of a new morality” and thus of “a new civilization.” Humanity has become “a slug in a slot machine,” setting it in motion without controlling its outcome.5

  Ellul’s arguments are trenchant, brilliantly argued, and often persuasively illustrated. His focus on mental processes and habits as the foundations of technology is especially apt. And Ellul probably would agree that other organisms, including bears and dogs, become subject to the same technological regime. But there is strong evidence for the power of technique well before the revolutionary era. In fact, for better or worse, the dominion of technique is an ancient one. For Ellul, the Greeks simply despised technique and exalted pure theory. He cites Archimedes’ destruction of the models that he used to construct his theories, once he had demonstrated his proofs geometrically. He also suggests that Greek ideals of harmony and moderation held back the development of technique. But there is no opposition between aesthetic ideals and the development of techniques. Experience and skill are hardly neglected in the Hippocratic writings in favor of abstract thought.6

  Ellul also underestimated the power, even “autonomy” in his terms, of military technology before the eighteenth century. Swordsmanship and other martial arts were cultivated and transmitted by generations of medieval and Renaissance masters. But only in early modern Europe did the distinction between technology and technique become apparent. Between 1594 and 1607 Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, showed how technique could transform technology. Matchlock muskets were heavy
and dangerous. Soldiers had to hold their weapon in one hand and a lighted fuse in the other. While some hunting weapons already had spiral grooves in their barrels for greater accuracy, this delicate rifling needed more careful loading and maintenance than rough and dirty military field conditions could afford. Thus the military musket was inaccurate as well as awkward to handle. Maurice’s genius was to see that organization and synchronized motion could make the crude musket an effective weapon. Inspired by an idea of his cousin William Louis, he assigned another cousin, Maurice’s adjutant Johann, to break down the cycle of preparing, loading, aiming, and firing muskets into discrete steps. Johann of Nassau had a series of forty-three plates engraved, each illustrating one stage. It was no longer enough for drillmasters to teach the operation of the musket. Soldiers now had to be able to march forward, rank on rank, as they prepared the weapons for firing when they advanced to the front rank, then countermarch to repeat the process. Only with precision and strict discipline could they avoid serious injury to themselves or their comrades. But once the process—the technique—was mastered, the troops could lay down repeated, formidable volleys. An intense field of simultaneous fire could be effective, even with many shots going wide of the mark. Maurice and Johann’s manual, Weapon Handling (1607), with its elegant illustrations by Jacob de Gheyn, transformed battle throughout Europe, especially through the victories of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden two decades later. The press was a technology, and the printer’s art a technique, that accelerated the diffusion of countless others.7