The Lantern-Bearers of the history of technology

Abstract

Historians of technology need to focus more on studying human experiences of technological change rather than technological objects. Aesthetic debates over ‘realism’ and ‘romance’ in the later nineteenth century suggest that greater attention to the inward world of lived experience can enhance our understanding of historical experience. The well-known writer Robert Louis Stevenson experimented with a variety of new forms of romance to write about contemporary events in the South Seas with primary attention to inward experiences of technological change, as opposed to accounts of technological objects.