A Review of Science and Technology in the Making

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Networking History

A Review of Science and Technology in the Making

Lisa Bud-Frierman

Middlesex University

Draft. Not for publication or citation

Abstract

This paper reviews the most ambitious attempt to date to create an interactive history of technology site on the Web, Science and Technology in the Making. Five projects deal with contemporary technological developments. The review describes the projects within the network and evaluates each according to its historiographic contribution, its user-friendliness as a site, the nature of the feedback and added value over conventional print-media. The sites were diverse in their quality both as examples of interactive media, and as history. While the number of contributions to all of them was disappointingly small, the best did hold out hope for the uses of the genre. The review concludes that the network as an integrating framework both added coherence and permitted flexibility.
Contents

Introduction1

The Five Web Sites: General Features2

Review of Individual Web Sites3

The Blackout History Project3

Making PCR4

The Big Dig5

Electric Vehicle History Online7

The MouseSite8

Conclusion10

Bibliography12

Appendices

Appendix 1: Five Projects <

Appendix 2: MediaWeaver <

Appendix 3: The Blackout Experience Survey <

Introduction

Science and Technology in the Making (STIM) is a network of five history of technology web sites supported by a two-year grant from the Alfred P.Sloan Foundation [See Appendix 1]. STIM is of intrinsic interest to multimedia historians both for its content and as a window into the process of conceptualizing and constructing interactive historical web sites.

This `virtual research environment’ is the brainchild of Timothy Lenoir, Professor of History at Stanford University in California (<Production>). His original vision is well-documented in the initial grant proposal (<HoTNet>). For Lenoir recent technology is a subject of discourse as well as a potential tool for contemporary historians. He argues that traditional historical methods are inadequate for analysing and describing modern complex technological systems. Paper archives and linear narratives alone, are no longer sufficient in an increasingly electronic world (Bolter 1991, Lanham 1993). The advent of new media (email, software, data tapes, video, CD-ROMs, DVDs, simulations, etc.) presents scholars with novel historical material and an array of technical and historiographic conundrums. What should they do with electronic texts preserved in obsolete software? Or how best can they convert original paper documents into digital form (<Interactivities>,<Archives>)? A primary question addressed in the proposal was: `From the perspective of working historians, is it possible to perform new and better history of technology, accessing data not previously available to historians, using contemporary Web-based technologies?’ (<HoTNet>).

The STIM project was designed to test whether the web environment is suitable for gathering new kinds of historical materials and disseminating the data to professional historians and to a broader audience (<methods>). It was recognized by the investigators that the process of making such primary sources accessible could be problematic. New skills are required to arrange and integrate ‘and make available several hundreds of threaded e-mail messages, electronically submitted 'documents', and digitized historical material’ (<Archives>). In the event, the number of responses received on the actual web sites appear to have been far from overwhelming. Nonetheless, structuring the data in a sensible manner was a challenge that some investigators met more successfully than others.

In encouraging responses, STIM opens up the possibility of real-time interaction between the evolving historical account and the scholar's `historical subjects’ (<Interactivities>). Instead of responding to published histories, witnesses are able to participate in the history-writing exercise through emailing their own accounts, sending in artifacts or original paper documents, or simply by expressing an opinion. As the investigators point out, `These on-line contributions become the `stuff of history’. Thus a broader range of people and perspectives can influence the way historical events are recorded and interpreted.

This more democratic approach to history may be facilitated by the Web, but has its roots elsewhere. The oral and public history movement set the precedent with personal interviews, audio and visual recording. In recent years, oral historians, such as Roy Rosenzweig (1995) of George Mason Univesity in Virginia and Stephen Brier (1998) of City University of New York, have gravitated to new media such as CD-ROMs and the Web. Their knowledge and techniques have been incorporated into recent historical enterprises like the electronic Journal for MultiMedia History (<jmmh>).

It is to be hoped that some of the lessons oral historians have learned about the art of interrogating witnesses, the foibles of memory, and questioning of their own assumptions when confronted with eyewitness accounts, will also diffuse into multimedia history. The investigators at the STIM sites have clearly concentrated on the technical difficulties associated with contributions from `historical subjects’, but have regrettably, not explicitly addressed these other historiographic issues.

The STIM project is based on the premise that collaborative engagement with the communities responsible for making a particular technology will transform historical practice. The multiplicity of perspectives will act as an antidote to narrow and inflexible interpretations of the history of technology and foster new forms of historical narrative (<HoTNet>, <Welcome>, <Interactivities>).

Here therefore is a project designed to explore the effect of new technology on the process of creating history. It deserves to be evaluated as a piece of interactive multimedia, as a series of historical case-studies and perhaps, most important, for the value it might add to more traditional print-mediated work.

The Five Web Sites: General Features

STIM's five web sites are produced at five of America’s most distinguished universities: Brown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, (UC Berkeley)and University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The project is coordinated at Stanford; the University's library provides editoral and technical support. For the sake of continuity and longevity it resides in the Stanford library. At the launch of the project in early 1997, a workshop was held at Stanford for the primary investigators to discuss shared problems and to develop a common strategy. A concluding workshop was scheduled for October 1998, to be followed by a summary report in early 1999 (<HoTNet>).

General guidelines were established to lend some cohesion to the STIM project. The sites were to function as databases for scholars and as testing grounds to discover whether a wider public exists for these resources. Each was to include primary source materials (documentary and archival) `sufficiently rich to initiate new research.’ as well as links to secondary literature for guiding researchers or other interested parties to current work in the history of science and technology (<HoTNet>).

Specific decisions about the intellectual content, storage, and presentation of data on a particular site were left to the discretion of each researcher. Lead investigators were to determine which were the significant historical resources to include in separate databases. The emphasis in the web site design was on flexibility: topics could develop `in response to discussions’ and openess to a variety of approaches was encouraged.(Ibid) They were urged to use new sources and to entice a broad-range of participants, while remaining cognizant of existing information networks.

STIM uses MediaWeaver, a Web-accessible database, created by Stanford Academic Software Development. This adaptable system manages `arbitrary forms of media’ and `keeps track of associations of multimedia objects including images, computer programs, structured text, audio and video recordings, distributed across a heterogeneous network of computers’ (<HoTNet>,<Multimedia>) [See Appendix 2].

Review of Individual Web Sites

The Blackout History Project (<Blackout.home>)

The Blackout History Project is a web site designed by James T. Sparrow of Brown University, Rhode Island where Ted Nelson coiner of such terms as “hypertext” worked in the mid-1960s (Hall, Davis and Hutchings, 1996). It concerns two major power failures which hit the New York City metropolitan region in 1965 and 1977. The focus is on the causes and consequences of a massive failure of large technological systems.

This site is conceived as an experimental research tool for investigating the social, psychological, political, and economic effects of the blackouts. The technological failure is seen within the broader context of business history and public policy. Sparrow also raises interesting issues about historical method. It is one of Sparrow's objectives to spark an online discussion about the use of the Web for researching and writing history. While acknowledging the utility of traditional sources, such as company records, published accounts, and newspapers, he questions the `epistemological biases’ of historians `whose sense of significance and causation guide the selection of evidence’. (<HoTNet>) Sparrow is convinced that a Web-based approach, emphasizing interactive data gathering, online discussions, multiple-author collaboration `and the interpretive sensitivity of oral history, can correct for that bias.’ This is clearly historiographically naive. Far from being a panacea, it may introduce other problems of analysis and interpretation, including issues of authenticity, credibility, and veracity (Rosenzweig 1995).

Less contentious, is his assertion that the new techniques will facilitate a deeper understanding of the multiple layers of historical action that led to the electric power failures. Sparrow is particularly keen to make contact with electricity consumers and electric utility staff and managers to develop a collective memory of the two crises (<Interactivities>).

The site's home page contains a brief, but vivid description of the blackouts and a discussion of the community responses which ranged from altruism to riots. It also features a forum for scholarly discussion, personal recollections, expert opinions, and public display of materials (<HoTNet>). To launch the site, the managers planned to conduct a few oral interviews with members of the public, government officials, and Con Edison employees. These were to be presented online in digitized audio and video form, along with news media coverage, scanned images, manuscripts and other documents.Unfortunately, this form of material has not been used; it certainly would have been a richer visitor experience if it had been included on the site. The potential audience consisted of New Yorkers who experienced the blackouts, people from the electric utilities, historians, or individuals interested in learning how to use a web site for building communities ( <Blackout/home>). Eventually, it was anticipated that material from the archive and forum would be the basis for essays. Another way of engaging users are the on-line surveys which, after completion, can be accessed by a full-text search.

A perusal of the Blackout History Project reveals several design flaws. The navigation is slow and often fruitless. In the `Forum’ section there are a number of `electronic pigeon holes’ , many of which are empty. Similar cul-de-sacs exist in the remaining sections (`Archive’, `Events’, `Debates’, and `Methods’ ). This site could be improved with better maintenance.

Another problem, perhaps not anticipated by the designer, is low turnout. For instance, in the discussion forum, four topics were posed; only two of these received replies, from one person each. Equally, half of the six sections under the heading, `Comments’, had no replies. The remaining sections had thirteen replies in total.All the empty space devoted to non-existent facts, questions, timelines, stories, observations, interviews and other materials gives an unfavourable impression, which detracts from the positive aspects of the Site.

The `Comments’ section gives some impression of the actual participants in `The Blackout History Project’. The users who identified themselves included three high school students, a Con Edison employee, a disaster recovery planner, and a reporter from Playboy magazine. Three of the visitors wrote in to complain about the poor quality of the site, especially the lack of written text in various sections. Three were seeking information about how the 1965 blackout affected the birthrate nine months later. The majority of others asked for general information about the blackouts.

On the plus side, the in-depth `Blackout Experience Survey’ was completed in detail by nine respondents (Appendix 3). The very detailed answers to queries, including many open-ended questions, were interesting. The `Archive’ section did contain full bibliographic references on the 1965 and 1977 blackouts, but the other five reference categories were virtually empty. An introductory essay in the `Methods’ section, exploring qualitative approaches to the humanities (oral history and ethnography), tantalizes the user with links to topics like `meanings and perspectives’ and `interpretive recursion’ which lead to nowhere. Despite its worthy aims, this site promises considerably more than it delivers.

Making PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) (<PCR>)

Another disappointing STIM site is `Making PCR’, designed by Paul Rabinow, an anthropologist at UC Berkeley. The subject of this site is PCR, which was conceived by Kary Mullis at the Cetus Corporation in 1983. It is an extremely important biotechnological invention which has revolutionized the practice of molecular biology by increasing the scale and scope of genetic manipulation. This web site has a broad historical agenda; it provides an opportunity for researchers to explore the development of university and biotechnology industry relations, conflicts over intellectual property, and the diffusion of a technology in the scientific and medical community (<HoTNet>).

The structure of `Making PCR’ is similar to that of the other sites. It contains an archive with key PCR documents (including scientific articles and papers, technical reports, interviews with research scientists and technicians and patent data). These primary sources, used as a foundation of the site were initially gathered by Rabinow for his ethnographic study, published as a book, Making PCR (Rabinow 1996) (<Archives>). He forsees the use of this resource by scholars and students to trace the history and diffusion of PCR (<FiveProjects>).

This site also has a forum devised for the inventors of PCR to contribute their own observations and comments about the technology, with a view to document the growth of PCR technology (<PCR>, <FiveProjects>, <HoTNet>). To stimulate discussion, Rabinow regularly posts `provocative statements’ (<Interactivities>). He is also interested in keeping a current register of legal battles over PCR and hopes to recruit users to participate in discussions about patents and ownership. A log is kept of all comments in the forum so earlier submissions are accessible to participants.

To increase the profile of the site, it was submitted and subsequently reviewed in several scientific journals. Rabinow also had personal contacts with many members of the community, whom he had interviewed for his book (<Interactivities>). He wished to recruit, in addition to scientists, technicians, lawyers, journalists, the larger community involved with PCR.

"Making PCR’ succeeds as an electronic annotated bibliography. The `Foundational Papers’ are well-organized according to specific topics and may be viewed on screen and printed out. The hand of project team member Suzanne Calpestri, head of the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library at Berkeley , is evident here. But it is less effective as an interactive forum. The site does not appear to be engaging a substantial committed audience. Out of the three `provocative statements’ posted, one received three replies (1998/99), another received two replies (1999), and the final received five replies (1998). Some of these message threads have become `cold spots’. `Making PCR’ is inactive and uninspired; those intrigued with PCR would probably find a dip into Rabinow's book a more rewarding experience.

The Big Dig: Boston Central Artery/Tunnel History (<Artery>)

"The Big Dig’ is a well-designed, user-friendly web site based at MIT. The primary investigators are two historians of technology, Thomas P. Hughes and Sara Wermiel. It focuses on the history of Scheme Z, a plan for bridges that were to carry a new highway across the Charles River in Boston. Following widespread public opposition, which commenced in 1989, state officials produced a new design using tunnels, to replace the original plan (<FiveProjects>,<Artery>,<Archives>). This exceptionally large, complex, and expensive civil engineering project, known as the Boston Central Artery Tunnel (CA/T) raises problems about technology, funding, ethnic and local politics, public participation in design processes, aesthetic, and environmental considerations.(<HoTNet>).

From the history of technology standpoint, Hughes and Wermiel see the CA/T project as an archetype of a modern large distributed system with a substantial number of subsystems. As a case study, it provides an opportunity to explore the multi-disciplinary issues confronting engineering project managers and the skills required to achieve their aims in the late twentieth century.

The investigators also wish to test the Web-environment as a data gathering instrument. They hope to rescue from oblivion material that might have been overlooked by researchers, such as unofficial records and individual memories of participants. Furthermore, they wish to exploit the interactive possibilities of the Web to obtain feedback on a chapter from Hughes’ book Rescuing Prometheus which deals with the CA/T project and Scheme Z. The chapter, `Coping with Complexity’, is reproduced on the site(Hughes 1998).

In common with the other STIM sites, `The Big Dig’ encompasses an online archive and forum for visitor contributions. To initiate the archive many documents were compiled from the project's engineers, architects, designers, and construction subcontractors. Much of the material came from public records, such as environmental impact hearings. The investigators planned to solicit further information from public interest and environmental organizations (<HoTNet>). Another source of data were interviews with engineers involved with CA/T. These were summarized, transcribed, and digitized.