Forces of Production : A Social History of Industrial Automation

Focusing on the design and implementation of computer-based automatic machine tools, David F. Noble challenges the idea that technology has a life of its own. Technology has been both a convenient scapegoat and a universal solution, serving to disarm critics, divert attention, depoliticize debate, and dismiss discussion of the fundamental antagonisms and inequalities that continue to beset America. This provocative study of the postwar automation of the American metal-working industry—the heart of a modern industrial economy—explains how dominant institutions like the great corporations, the universities, and the military, along with the ideology of modern engineering shape, the development of technology. Noble shows how the system of "numerical control," perfected at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and put into general industrial use, was chosen over competing systems for reasons other than the technical and economic superiority typically advanced by its promoters. Numerical control took shape at an MIT laboratory rather than in a manufacturing setting, and a market for the new technology was created, not by cost-minded producers, but instead by the U. S. Air Force. Competing methods, equally promising, were rejected because they left control of production in the hands of skilled workers, rather than in those of management or programmers. Noble demonstrates that engineering design is influenced by political, economic, managerial, and sociological considerations, while the deployment of equipment—illustrated by a detailed case history of a large General Electric plant in Massachusetts—can become entangled with such matters as labor classification, shop organization, managerial responsibility, and patterns of authority. In its examination of technology as a human, social process, __Forces of Production__ is a path-breaking contribution to the understanding of this phenomenon in American society. Contents......Page 8 Preface to the Transaction Edition......Page 10 Preface......Page 12 Acknowledgments......Page 18 Part One: COMMAND AND CONTROL......Page 20 Ch. 1 . The Setting: The War Abroad......Page 22 Ch. 2 . The Setting: The War at Home......Page 40 Ch. 3 . Power and the Power of Idea s......Page 61 Ch. 4 . Toward the Automatic Factory......Page 76 Part Two: SOCIAL CHOICE IN MACHINE DESIGN......Page 96 Ch. 5 . By the Numbers......Page 98 Ch. 6 . By the Numbers II......Page 125 Ch. 7 . The Road Not Taken......Page 171 Part Three: A NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: CHANGE WITHOUT CHANGE......Page 220 Ch. 9 . Free Lunch......Page 222 Ch. 10 . Diffusion: A Glimpse of Reality......Page 239 Ch. 11 . Deployment: Power in Numbers......Page 257 Ch. 12 . W ho Running the Shop?......Page 300 Ch. 13 . Epilogue: Another Look at Progress......Page 359 APPENDICES......Page 390 Appendix I......Page 392 Appendix II......Page 394 Appendix III......Page 396 Appendix IV......Page 398 Appendix V......Page 399 Notes......Page 402 Index......Page 434

Focusing on the postwar automation of the American metal-working industry—the heart of the modern industrial economy—this is a provocative study of how automation has assumed a critical role in America. David Noble argues that industrial automation—more than merely a technological advance—is a social process that reflects very real divisions and pressures within our society. The book explains how technology is often spurred and shaped by the military, corporations, universities, and other mighty institutions. Using detailed case studies, Noble also demonstrates how engineering design is influenced by political, economic, and sociological considerations, and how the deployment of equipment is frequently entangled with certain managerial concerns.