Our Technological Age, from the Inside Out

Abstract

generation ago, in the early 1990s, SHOT’s generous spirit of inclusion gave rise to a debate about contextualism that has never really reached a conclusion, and probably never should. It arose from the publication in 1988 of an edited volume titled In Context: History and the History of Technology—Essays in Honor of Melvin Kranzberg, edited by Stephen Cutcliffe and Robert Post and published upon Mel’s retirement by Lehigh University Press. Three years later, in 1991 (the wheels of the academy can turn slowly), my MIT colleague Leo Marx published a review of the book in the pages of Technology and Culture. At the end of the first paragraph, Leo rather disingenuously raised what he claimed to consider a simple question: What is the rationale for distinguishing the history of technology from history? More generally, what is the rationale for distinguishing specialized histories from general history?