Summary of Technology and History: Kranzberg's Laws by Melvin Kranzberg published in Technology and Culture in 1986
First Law : Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
Everything is relative - Technology has complex and unpredictable impacts on the social ecology, requiring careful evaluation of its costs and benefits in different contexts and time frames.
By that I mean that technology’s interaction with the social ecology is such that technical developments frequently have environmental, social, and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves, and the same technology can have quite different results when introduced into different contexts or under different circumstances.Many of our technology-related problems arise because of the unforeseen consequences when apparently benign technologies are employed on a massive scale. Unforeseen dis-benefits can thus arise from presumably beneficent technologies. nuclear technology offers the prospect of unlimited energy resources, but it has also brought the possibility of worldwide destruction. It should constantly remind us to compare short-term versus long-term results, the utopian hopes versus the spotted actuality, the what-might-have been against what actually happened, and the trade-offs among various goods and possible bads; All of this can be done only by seeing how technology interacts in different ways with different values and institutions, indeed, with the entire sociocultural milieu.
Second Law: Invention is the mother of necessity.
Technical innovations often need further inventions to be fully effective.
Every technical innovation seems to require additional technical advances in order to make it fully effective. Many major innovations have required further inventions to make them completely effective, Thus, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone spawned a variety of technical improvements, ranging from Edison’s carbon-granule microphone to central-switching mechanisms.
Third Law: Technology comes in packages, big and small.
Complex mechanisms are systems of interconnected components that depend on each other and any change in one part affects the others and requires adjustments. Therefore, we cannot analyze the components separately, but we have to consider how they interact with each other.
The fact is that today’s complex mechanisms usually involve several processes and components. Radar, for example, is a very complicated system, requiring specialized materials, power sources and intricate devices to send out waves of the proper frequency, detect them when they bounce off an object, and then interpret them and place the results on a screen. In the book Networks of Power What I call packages Hughes more precisely and accurately calls systems; which he defines as coherent structures composed on interacting, interconnected components. When one component changes, other parts of the system must undergo transformations so that the system might continue to function. Hence the parts of a system cannot be viewed in isolation but must be studied in terms of their interrelations with the other parts
Fourth Law: Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions.
Technology-policy decisions depend more on nontechnical (social and political factors as well as the public’s perception of risk) factors than technology. No risk is the highest risk of all.
In Networks of Power Hughes likewise demonstrates how nontechnical factors affected the efficient growth of electrical networks by comparing developments in Chicago, Berlin, and London. Private enterprise in Chicago, in the person of Samuel Insull, followed the path of the most efficient technology in seeking economies of scale. In Berlin and London, however, municipal governments were more concerned about their own authority than about technical efficiency, and political infighting meant that they lagged behind in developing the most economical power networks. Especially politicized has been the question of nuclear power. The nuclear industry itself has been partly to blame for technological deficiencies, but the presumption of risk by the public, especially following the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, has affected the future of what was once regarded as a safe and inexhaustible source of power. The public fears possible catastrophic consequences from nuclear generators. Yet the historical fact is that no one has been killed by commercial nuclear power accidents in this country. Contrast this with the 50,000 Americans killed each year by automobiles. Partly this is due to the public’s perception of risk, rather than to the actual risks themselves. People seek a zero-risk society. But as Aaron Wildavsky has so aptly put it, “No risk is the highest risk of all”.
Fifth Law: All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant.
History, a key to an understanding of the future, is often taught without considering the role of technology, which has shaped the daily life, the arts, and the humanistic endeavors of people throughout history.
History is one of the fundamental liberal arts and is essential as a key to an understanding of the future. Many of today’s students simply do not see the relevance of history to the present or to their future. I suggest that this is because most history, as it is currently taught, ignores the technological element. Similarly, social historians of the Annales school have stressed how technology set the patterns of daily life for the vast majority of people throughout history. Perhaps most guilty of neglecting technology are those concerned with the history of the arts. This might be because they regard technology solely in terms of mechanical devices and do not even begin to comprehend the complex nature of technological developments and their direct influences on the arts, to say nothing of their indirect influence on mankind’s humanistic endeavors. any historian of art or of the Renaissance should perceive that such artistic masters as Leonardo and Michelangelo were also great engineers. That relationship continues today as David Billington has shown in stressing the relationship of structural design and art.
Sixth Law: Technology is a very human activity - and so is the history of technology.
Technology is created by humans and humans are changed by technology. Technology is both a product and a factor of human development, and there is a mutual dependence and influence between them.
A lady came up to the great violinist Fritz Kreisler after a concert and gushed, “Maestro, your violin makes such beautiful music”; Kreisler held his violin up to his ear and said, “I don’t hear any music coming our of it”. You see, the instrument, the hardware, the violin itself, was of no use without the human element. But then again, without the instrument, Kreisler would not have been able to make music. The history of technology is the story of man and tool - hand and mind - working together. If the hardware is faulty or if the software is deficient, the sounds that emerge will be discordant: but when man and machine work together, they can make some beautiful music.