"The History of Technology is Most Relevant"

Plus an update on what I'm working on. And why you should stop giving me money.

Way back in 1984, the president of the Society for the History of Technology — the magnificently monikered “SHOT” — gave a speech in which he outlined six laws.

“These are not laws in the sense of commandments,” Melvin Kranzberg cautioned, “but rather a series of truisms deriving from a longtime immersion in the study of technology and its interactions with sociocultural change.” In time, Kranzberg’s laws became, if not canonical, at least famous among those who study the history of technology.

Tersely summarized, they look like this:

1. Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.

2. Invention is the mother of necessity.

3. Technology comes in packages, big and small.

4. Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions.

5. All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant.

6. Technology is a very human activity – and so is the history of technology.

The common thread? People matter. A lot.

Half a century before Kranzberg delivered his laws, technology was generally ignored by historians, who saw history as the study of narrowly defined political and economic power. Historians who studied economies saw technology as an input, but not much more. And the few historians who specifically studied technology typically saw their domain as inventors and inventions. The history of technology was the history of vulcanization, flywheels, dynamos, catalytic converters and other subjects that set engineers’ hearts aflutter.

Kranzberg and other historians of his generation realized that as important as technical questions were in the development of technology, they did not drive themselves. People did the driving: Understanding how technology developed as it did, and how it changed society, requires historians to examine how technology was shaped by the perceptions and choices of people — all sorts of people.

This turn in historiography was partly a reaction to mid-20th century “technological determinist” writings in which technology was portrayed as having a mind and destiny of its own and people were said to have no choice but to accept what technology wills. No, the historians said. Look at the historical record. The evidence is overwhelming: People — from powerful politicians to humble housewives — not only shape new technologies, they shape new technologies before new technologies shape people.

There are still historians who think inventors and inventions are the whole story — this 2008 Jill Lepore review in The New Yorker skewers one such fellow — but for the most part Kranzberg and company swept the field. Today, most historians who study technology will tell you that in the dance between people and technology, people lead.

Last month, I attended the annual SHOT conference at the University of Southern California, and the people-centric nature of the work couldn’t be more obvious. The history of technologies, particularly new technologies, is the history of people blinking in amazement. It is the history of people trying to figure out what this new thing is. Whether they should invest in it. Whether they should buy it. Whether — and how — to regulate it. Even how to use it. Perhaps especially how to use it. (That last point is the origin of Kranzberg’s “invention is the mother of necessity.”)

All of that sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it?

Artificial intelligence. Autonomous vehicles, genetic engineering, blockchain. Every now and then, another amazing new thing surfaces — causing excitement, alarm, and confusion. And that has been true for the past two centuries.

Which really underscores Kranzberg’s fifth law: “All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant.”

And yet.

We have been hyperventilating about AI for about a year and a half. In all the op-eds, tweets, and hearings, how many historical references have you seen?

Me? I’ve seen approximately — give or take — zero.

And I’m not even talking about historical analogies like “people engaged in wild speculation about the newly invented telephone that looks rather like what we’re hearing about the uses of AI.” I think that sort of thing could be very fruitful and enlightening. But, no, I’m talking about the history of AI itself.

The term “artificial intelligence” was invented in the Eisenhower era and the field had multiple booms and busts over the subsequent decades. Time and again, breakthroughs were followed by brick walls and the feverish expectations of experts and investors — “THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!” — were confounded.

Doesn’t that sound awfully … relevant? Wouldn’t you like to hear more?

And yet, history is practically non-existent in the public conversation about AI. An Oxford computer scientist who wrote a book about AI’s history even told me he thinks most young computer scientists conflate “machine learning” and “AI” — so even people working in the field think the field has no history!

Way back in 1984, Kranzberg was optimistic. “Leaders in all fields are increasingly turning to historians of technology for expertise regarding the nature of the sociotechnical problems facing them,” he said. I wish I could write that today. I’m not an historian, of technology or otherwise, but I’ve spent decades studying public policy, and I believe passionately that public affairs should be informed by history. And from my perspective, I see news media and other public forums dominated by people whose historical awareness runs no deeper than the Clinton administration, legislatures full of people whose knowledge of history encompasses all the movies of Tom Hanks, technology giants run by people who think modern history began when Steve Jobs founded Apple, and a public whose ignorance of history makes it vulnerable to tech-driven stock bubbles — hello, crypto — as well as nostalgia and the demagogues who feed on it.

And AI is just one illustration. There is so much else we’re missing.

At the SHOT conference, I listened to a talk by Jeremy Greene, a Johns Hopkins historian who wrote The Doctor Who Wasn’t There. Greene showed that from the 1920s on, new information and communications technology has prompted grand declarations that medicine will be revolutionized. People get excited. Investors and corporations pour in money. Visionaries pen utopian and dystopian stories of the coming, utterly transformed future. But in time, neither utopia nor dystopia emerges. Instead, the future turns out to be a mixed bag in which the technology makes a difference, yes, to various degrees, but in ways more complicated and contradictory — and less dramatic — than the early hand-wavers foresaw. “Neither of our narratives for hopes or fears tend to come to pass,” he summed up.

The assembled historians could have piled up stories like that, each with the same conclusion: Wild visions dominate at first — heaven is coming, or hell — but tend to slowly fade and be forgotten as a far more complex, more muddled reality emerges.

Does that strike you as something we all should know? It does me.

What I’m Working On

Now, all that said, I have to admit I am biased.

I’ve been studying this stuff for years. And — dramatic pause — my publisher just handed me a contract to write a book about it. So, yeah, I think this is fascinating and important. And I really hope you agree.

I also hope you’re patient. It will be years before that book is available at fine stores near you.

That’s because I’m slow.

But it’s also because I just started a new collaboration which I expect will take up almost all my time for a year.

This other book will appear — if the Lord is willing and the crick don’t rise — in 2025ish.

What is this other book? With whom am I collaborating? I can’t discuss that now. All I can say is my co-author is a wonderful person who did something very good for the world. The themes and ideas have deep personal resonance for me. And the book is urgently needed.

Which is to say you should buy copies for all your friends, neighbours, co-workers, and local politicians. As I will be sure to remind you when the time comes.

About This Newsletter

So you may ask, “are you going to keep writing PastPresentFuture?”

Or you may ask, “given how little writing you’ve done here over the previous couple of months, you lazy sod, I take it you are abandoning us?”

Allow me to clarify.

I have always treated this newsletter as a hobby. Even during lulls in my work schedule, I’ve never given it more than a day or two a week. And so it mostly consists of whatever stray thoughts cross my mind, combined with minimal research. (I know. I’m really selling it, right?)

Some writers on Substack treat their newsletters quite differently. The newsletter is their job. They work on it full time. Their best work goes here.

I can’t do that, for a couple of reasons.

One is simply that the creator economy means there are huge numbers of people “generating content.” That phrase tells you something. It sounds like someone mindlessly cranking a handle to churn out sausage, which happens to be a good approximation of how much care and skill goes into the content these people generate. As a result, the Internet is riddled with people who glom onto any good, original writing — they love surprising stories from history — and plagiarize it shamelessly. And that was before AI. Now, this process is highly automated. And getting more so rapidly.

That means if, in my research, I discover some fascinating little historical story, and write about it here, it will be lifted, repackaged, and republished. Other “content generators” will do the same to the original miscreant. Before you know it, some mangled version of my little story will be all over the place, and what was fresh and lovely will be, in a few years time, as delightful to the reader as rotting roses. And that is when my little historical story will appear in my book.

One of the frustrations of writing this newsletter is that I spend all week doing research that dredges up all sorts of fascinating tidbits. I would love to immediately share it here. But I can’t. Because rotting roses. Hence, what I deliver here are only my stray thoughts backed with minimal research. Which is frustrating. It’s like pitching in the big leagues without ever using my fastball. Or — I’m Canadian so a hockey metaphor is inevitable — playing in the NHL without skates.

You may wonder how other writers manage to turn this into a full-time job. The answer is largely that they write about things that can — if you’re good and prolific — garner a very large, paying readership. Politics. Sports. Economics and business. They do not write about historical esoterica and how to use the past to improve decisions in the present and make a better future. What I am doing is very much not the path to becoming a famous pundit.

Still, I have a decent audience for my stray thoughts. It’s about to top 5,000. But only a small percentage has a paid subscription. So even if I tripled or quadrupled my numbers, relying on this as a means of making a living would be a little too monastic for my liking. (And more importantly, for my wife’s liking.)

So unless and until some very rich person decides to play Medici and become my beloved patron, I will continue to write what I can in my spare time, and no more.

About Those Paid Subscriptions

No, I’m not going to urge you to pony up.

In fact — and I swear this is not some ingenious marketing spin — I am going to suggest to those of you who do have paid subscriptions that it’s OK if you want to drop them.

Why might you do that? All my posts are free to everyone. I don’t think Substack wants me to say that. But it’s true.

And paid subscriptions are a lot of money. Even for a writer who works at it full-time. Which I don’t.

So if you’re thinking, “this is a lot of money and he doesn’t write all that often” but you don’t cancel your subscription because you think that may make me feel bad, well…. You are a lovely person. Thank you. But cancel the paid subscription and take out a free one.

When people cancel, Substack asks if they want to leave a note for the author explaining why. One reader sent me such a note recently. She mentioned Dickens and his famous summary of the line between happiness and misery: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery."

I loved that. You want to cancel a paid subscription without making me feel bad? Write “Dickens” and we’re good. Or better, write something as clever as that reader. I may pay you.

For others who insist on paying, I won’t stop you, if you insist. But, as before, I will let you know where your money is going.

Mostly, it’s books. I’m incorporated — a writer’s life is feast and famine and a corporation is essential for smoothing out income — and I recently did my corporate taxes. (Well, my wife did my taxes. But I cheered her on.) Turns out I spent several thousand dollars on work-related books alone. Publishers and bookstores thank you.

But that’s not all. Archives are expensive because they employ skilled workers who preserve and protect the past and help people like me find what they’re looking for. Archivists thank you.

And you know that conference for the Society of the History of Technology I went to? You paid for that. I thank you.

And when that history of technology book comes out, lo, many years from now, I’m going to thank as many of my paid subscribers on its pages as the publisher will let me get away with.

Obscure Closing Anecdote

The University of Southern California campus is in central Los Angeles, a city not exactly renowned for its historical architecture. But right next to USC is the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a grand stadium commissioned in 1921 and opened in 1923.

The 1920s produced many such shrines for sports. Wembley Stadium in London. Yankee Stadium in New York. Most met the wrecker’s ball years ago. So Memorial Coliseum is a rarity for Los Angeles and the world. And its history is only deepening: When it hosts the 2028 Olympics, Memorial Coliseum will become the only venue to host the Olympic Games three times — in 1932, 1984, and 2028.

So here’s a question whose answer should be obvious for such a famous stadium: Who is memorialized in the name “Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum”?

You almost certainly don’t know, although you can probably guess using the dates I provided above.

On the sidewalk next to the stadium, a large sign lays out the history.

Here is where Jesse Owens ran, where Jack Dempsey fought and Sonja Henie skated. Nelson Mandela and John F. Kennedy spoke here to tens of thousands. Sandy Koufax struck out 18 batters. The Rolling Stones rocked its seats, and here Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II preached.

All that history came about because a group of civic-minded Angelenos transformed some barren acreage into a memorial to war veterans and a landmark that has withstood both time and Angelenos’ fondness for demolishing the past.

That’s the only reference I came across to the people supposedly memorialized by the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. And it’s misleading. The coliseum does not honour “war veterans.” It memorialized Los Angeles residents who fought in the Great War, aka the First World War, aka World War One. In 1968, the stadium was officially rededicated to all American veterans of that war. But only that war. (I should note the stadium’s website, which has an extensive section on its history, does explicitly say whose memory the stadium honours. That statement consists of one-half of one sentence. See if you can find it.)

As I’ve written before, the evolution of the American collective memory of the First World War is fascinating.

For the United States, the war was relatively brief, but the effort was immense, and the losses traumatizing. As I wrote:

The war had kindled an intense patriotism and a staggering national effort: In 1917, the US Army had roughly 127,000 officers and soldiers, a tiny force at a time when a single battle could injure or kill hundreds of thousands of men. (Britain suffered 57,000 casualties on the first day of the four-month-long Battle of the Somme.) By the following year, the US Army alone had four million men in uniform. Another 800,000 served in the other branches. The cost was equally staggering: More than 53,000 service members were killed in action — relative to the American population in 1918, the death rate was double that of the Vietnam War — while 204,000 were wounded. The US also suffered 63,000 non-combat related deaths, mostly due to the influenza pandemic of 1918.

The end of the war was immediately followed across the country by local initiatives to create memorials at a suitably huge scale. One was the astonishing memorial in Kansas City. The Los Angeles Memorial Stadium was another.

But by the 1930s, public opinion had swung hard against American involvement in European affairs and the belief that the United States had been lured into the war by international bankers and skulking foreigners — yes, that often meant Jews — was conventional wisdom. Then a second, more terrible war overshadowed the first. And unlike that earlier war, the later war enjoyed overwhelming popular support long afterward.

The Great War faded from American consciousness.

It’s telling that Ken Burns — the great repository of American public memory — has produced documentaries about every conceivable subject but not World War One. In fact, when the hundredth anniversary of the war came and went, he spent his time working on a documentary about the Vietnam War.

It’s all the more telling that even on official signs laying out the history of the Los Angeles Memorial Stadium, who, exactly, is memorialized by the stadium — what they did, where they fought, why — is nowhere to be seen.