Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation
David F. Noble. Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-19-504046-5
Noble's book is an attempt to show the impact of technological determinism on American society, focusing on the effects of industrial automation on science, management, and labor in the post-WWII era. His goal is to "attempt to demystify technological development and thereby to challenge and transcend the obsessions and fantasies that artificially delimit our imagination and freedom of action." (p. xi) In short, he wants to show the limitations that technological determinism imposes on society in an attempt to liberate American society from its love affair with progress.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part, "Command and Control", deals with the effect of World War II on scientific research and on the relationship between management and labor. The development of a military-industrial-scientific complex that was funded by the U.S. military resulted in an ongoing research focus on technology that would benefit the military. Meanwhile the relationship between labor and management became increasingly hostile as the unions fought against the introduction of numerical control (N/C) and other kinds of automation. The result of the postwar era was an alignment of scientists and engineers with management and government against the workers.
The second part, "Social Choice in Machine Design", discusses the divorce of systems design from the actual worker. The new designs were used by management to de-skill and control the worker, to enforce discipline on the shop floor by their very design. Noble illustrates how the military's insistence on performance and control as overriding features resulted in a demand for automation as a way to ensure the performance of the final product. Workers were felt to be to error-prone to be able to consistently meet the newly-heightened standards of military work, particularly in the aircraft industry. Noble goes on to dispute the idea that the direction of technological advance is determined solely by technical merit; he asserts that the direction is determined by the power of those promoting a particular technology. He examines an alternative to the N/C method of machining called record/playback (R/P) and shows why it was not successful in industry.
The third part, "A New Industrial Revolution: Change Without Change", begins with an examination of the role of the military in both developing N/C and then making it a standard. Despite the expenditure of millions of dollars of public money, the technology was slow to spread outside the defense industry. While N/C promised more control over the process and the ability to use less-skilled workers, neither prediction came true. Workers were still able to assert some measure of control on the shop floor, and worker skill was still necessary to compensate for limitations in the N/C machinery or errors in programming. Noble sums up by showing how technological change is often the result of a desire for domination or control rather than for increased efficiency or productivity. Noble blames technological determinism for justifying this control.
Copyright 1996 by Gordon Zaft.