The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900

280 Pages·2006·2.85 MB·English

by  David Edgerton

THE SHOCK OF THE OLD
Technology and global history since 1900
DAVID EDGERTON
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THE SHOCK OF THE OLD
‘Offers a view of technology that matters in a world convinced that it
is discovering everything for the fi rst time’ Guardian
‘Alan Bennett’s history boys have a keen rival in audacious
revisionism in David Edgerton’s latest book. Where the young
historians delighted in proclaiming that “Stalin was a sweetie and
Wilfred Owen was a wuss”, Edgerton focuses on unquestioned
assumptions about the history of technology.’ TLS
‘A quiet pleasure and salutary corrective … Edgerton leaves us with
an infi nitely more nuanced, balanced and perceptive account of
technology and social change than conventional accounts would
allow.’ David Goldblatt, Independent
‘The Shock of the Old is a book I can use. I can take it in two hands
and bash it over the heads of every techno-nerd, computer geek and
neophiliac futurologist I meet.’ Simon Jenkins
‘I liked Edgerton’s challenging thesis, and I want to cheer it on in the
face of our throw-away world of non-stop neophilia’ John Cornwell,
Sunday Times
‘Edgerton’s innovation is to focus on the technologies we actually
use rather than Tomorrow’s World-style bright new things that
mostly never catch on or last.’ Peter Forbes, Daily Mail
‘Original and timely … a compelling tour de force’ Nature
‘A pathbreaking work’ American Scientist
‘Newfangled things are sexy, but how signifi cant are they? …
Edgerton provides a corrective by emphasising some of the
overlooked technologies that affect the lives of many’ John Sparks,
Newsweek
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‘Packed with iconoclastic, thought-provoking ideas that challenge
our innovation-centric view of technology.’ Icon
‘Lucid and completely convincing … points are made without a
trace of romanticism, which only adds to the power of his argument.
[The] optimistic political message is merely one of this splendid
book’s strengths.’ Journal of American History
DAVID EDGERTON is the Hans Rausing Professor at Imperial
College London, where he was the founding director of the Centre for
the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. He has challenged
conventional analyses of technology for twenty years, and is a regular
in the press, on television and radio. He is married with three children
and lives in London.
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This paperback edition published in 2008
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by
PROFILE BOOKS LTD
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Copyright © David Edgerton, 2006, 2008
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by
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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part
of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the
publisher of this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 86197 306 1
This book is printed on FSC certifi ed paper
Cert no. TT-COC-002227
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CONTENTS
Introduction ix
1 Signifi cance 1
2 Time 28
3 Production 52
4 Maintenance 75
5 Nations 103
6 War 138
7 Killing 160
8 Invention 184
Conclusion 206
Notes 213
Selected Bibliography 240
Acknowledgements 248
List of Illustrations 250
Index 251
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For Andrew
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I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as
the New.
It hobbled up on new crutches which no one had ever seen before
and stank of new smells of decay which no one had ever
smelt before.
Bertolt Brecht (1939), from ‘Parade of the Old New’, in Bertolt Brecht: Poems
1913–1956, John Willett and Ralph Manheim (eds) (London: Methuen,
1987), p. 323
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Introduction
Much of what is written on the history of technology is for boys of all
ages. This book is a history for grown-ups of all genders. We have lived
with technology for a long time, and collectively we know a lot about it.
From economists to ecologists, from antiquarians to historians, people
have had different views about the material world around us and how
it has changed. Yet too often the agenda for discussing the past, present
and future of technology is set by the promoters of new technologies.
When we are told about technology from on high we are made to think
about novelty and the future. For many decades now the term ‘technol-
ogy’ has been closely linked with invention (the creation of a new idea)
and innovation (the fi rst use of a new idea). Talk about technology centres
on research and development, patents and the early stages of use, for
which the term diffusion is used. The timelines of technological history,
and they abound, are based on dates of invention and innovation. The
most signifi cant twentieth-century technologies are often reduced to
the following: fl ight (1903), nuclear power (1945), contraception (1955),
and the internet (1965). We are told that change is taking place at an ever-
accelerating pace, and that the new is increasingly powerful. The world,
the gurus insist, is entering a new historical epoch as a result of technol-
ogy. In the new economy, in new times, in our post-industrial and post-
modern condition, knowledge of the present and past is supposedly ever
less relevant. Inventors, even in these post-modern times, are ‘ahead of
their time’, while societies suffer from the grip of the past, resulting in a
supposed slowness to adapt to new technology.
There are new things under the sun, and the world is indeed changing
radically, but this way of thinking is not among them. Although
the emphasis on the future itself suggests originality, this kind of
ix
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