Technology and Culture最新文献

The image on the cover of this issue of Technology and Culture features an early modern Indian textile, popularly known as "chintz" in the Western world. The image depicts stylized flowers surrounded by curving leaves on meandering branches-a colourful artisanal rendition of imaginative flora on a utilitarian object. This essay argues that material objects, such as this chintz, contain embedded knowledge necessary for understanding techniques used in their production and for replicating these objects in new contexts. It further contends that magnified images of historical objects serve as movable microscopic pieces of the objects, enabling detailed visual examinations often not possible with the objects themselves. By foregrounding the use of objects as historical sources, the essay demonstrates the value of incorporating images as essential resources in the historian's research methodology.

How does the material world intervene in assembling infrastructure? This study examines the extension of the Buenos Aires subway during the 1930s and 1940s, using the concepts of "constructability" and "ability" as analytical lenses to reveal three interpretative layers-tunneling, concrete, and soil-that reflect varying degrees of human-nonhuman interaction and agency. By foregrounding the material aspects of the subway-building process, the article shows how concrete, locally available materials, and the urban environment challenged and recalibrated the German contractors' managerial approach. While acknowledging the ways materials can support or constrain human action, this article disputes the idea that materials possess independent agency. Instead, it calls for a more precise understanding of the physical aspects of construction that shape the material-human interface.

This article challenges conventional cultural histories of mobility by rethinking the impact of technology in nineteenth-century Europe. Drawing on nearly one hundred European cross-border travel accounts-especially by travelers from the northern Netherlands-it argues that mobility depended less on technological innovation than on what travelers imagined technology could do. Rather than being driven by inventions, satisfactory travel hinged on the availability of "ordinary" technologies, dense transport networks, reliable services, dry weather, affordable and socially accepted modes of transport, and travelers' bodies' perceived capacities. Meanwhile, over time, it was broader economic transformations and shifts in mentality that most deeply reshaped patterns of travel. Responding to calls from science and technology studies, the article redefines technology as a socially specific repertoire of imaginable practices rather than a sequence of modernizing breakthroughs.

Do infrastructures possess thing-power? Do they act independently of humans, and how might materiality help us better describe the relationship between humans and infrastructures? This special section explores the promises and limits of new materialism for the history of infrastructure, complicating conventional understandings of the built world. New materialist approaches posit that the material world has intrinsic capacities-forms of agency that operate beyond human intent. While infrastructures are human-made, their assembly and operation involve numerous nonhuman actors and forces outside human control. The articles in this section approach infrastructures through material artifacts such as jamming sluice gates, minuscule sand particles, toxic creosote, crumbling concrete, and even the ionosphere. They examine how humans responded to these substances, structural components, expected material properties, and unknown matter like the ionosphere. This perspective reframes our understanding of infrastructure, knowledge production, and human-technology relations by foregrounding the thing-power embedded in the human-made environment.

Rather than treating visual sources as mere documentary evidence, this essay emphasizes their active role in constructing truth. Using a 1914 photograph of Los Angeles as a case study, the essay demonstrates how new materialists can critically engage with visual sources in both research and teaching to examine how they shape meaning. It argues that images are uniquely suited to reveal the entanglements between humans and nonhumans while capturing unintended details often overlooked in textual sources. Photographs, in particular, offer a compelling means to convey abstract concepts-such as matter's vitality and creativity-in a more accessible form.

Modern supply chains claim novel levels of resilience and adaptability, but these were developed in World War I (and later redeployed during World War II) and have been "reinvented" in contemporary business contexts. This article highlights how the supply chains developed for wartime aviation logistics anticipated today's notions of supply chain resilience and adaptability. While the logistic innovations of World War II are widely recognized, those developed during World War I, particularly in aviation, are less well known but equally groundbreaking. The Royal Flying Corps pioneered agile supply chain strategies that sustained continuous air superiority on the Western Front-helping break the stalemate of trench warfare. Innovations such as postponement, strategic warehousing, bidirectional supply, recycling, circular manufacturing, and product service systems addressed the challenges of high attrition, technological advancement, and unpredictable demand.

This article recovers the neglected role of anthropomorphic dummies in Cold War space exploration. Going beyond their association with crash testing, the article shows how dummies were central to human factors research and helped configure ideas of the ideal spacefaring body. Through archival and media sources, the authors demonstrate how dummies embodied racialized and gendered norms and influenced both technical environments and cultural imaginaries. This reframing positions dummies as active tools in shaping astronautics, thereby contributing to the history of science, science and technology studies, and the cultural history of space.

Recent historiography on empire and postcolonialism has highlighted the diverse visual practices and technologies that shaped colonial narratives and knowledge. This article examines how various visual media were used to advance Italy's imperial agenda, drawing on both recent scholarship and original research. Introducing the concept of transmediality and its methodological importance for analyzing colonial cultural and visual practices, the article presents the case of Vittorio Tedesco Zammarano-an explorer, hunter, filmmaker, and writer active in Italian Somalia. Through a close examination of the technologies and cultural practices, this study reflects on how colonial fantasies, desires, and epistemes-particularly those related to hunting and safari-were intertwined with Fascist Italy's colonial ambitions, highlighting broader trans-imperial connections.

This article examines the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and its response to the ozone crisis in the 1970s, highlighting the science-skepticism that hindered responses to environmental issues in the twentieth century. Although well-positioned to address ozone depletion by developing safer chemical alternatives, ASHRAE resisted regulatory changes, framing concerns over CFC emissions as an attack on engineering and American technological dominance. Their rhetoric of doubt persisted for over a decade, even after corporations like DuPont acknowledged environmental harm and adopted chlorofluorocarbon controls. This study reveals how skepticism within scientifically literate communities can complicate environmental responses and explores the role of professional identity in shaping environmental and technical policy decisions.