History of Technology

HS 101
 Instructor Information
Sreekumar Jayadevan
Room 210, IIT Ropar

sreekumar@iitrpr.ac.in
1881-242187
The best way to reach me is via email
 Course Structure
Credits: 1.5
Contact Hours: 21 × 50 Minutes
(Including Tutorials)

Timing: D1 Wednesdays 2:00PM - 2:50PM

Thursdays 2:55PM - 3: 45 PM

Timing: D2 Thursdays 9:55 AM - 10: 45 AM

Fridays 10:50 AM – 11: 40 AM
 Grading

Quizzes/Assignments/Homeworks: 20%
Midsemester Examination: 40%
Final Examination: 40%
 Attendance

As per institute policy

 Classroom Manners
• Take notes in the class
• Do not operate laptops/cell phones in the class
• If you have doubts during lectures, please ask
immediately
• If you want to improve your grade, participate in
discussions
• Late entry to the class is not permitted
• Assignements/homeworks have to be submitted
on time. Late submission is not allowed.
What comes to your mind when you
see this word?

“Technology”
What comes to your mind when you
see this word?

“History”
Why study History of Technology?

Example
Ford KA
Dodge Ram Rumble Bee Pickup
Dreirad Tempo
VW Beetle
VW Beetle
 Learning History of Technology
• Is about the principles which drive technology
• Is human preferences and tastes
• Is about the heuristic principles in our
technological history
• Is about learning why a technology failed in
our history and the effect it leaves on us
 Learning History of Technology
• Is not about past information
• Is about inferring the contexts of what ‘should
be’ from ‘what was’
• Is not about individuals and inventions
• Is about learning the political, social and
philosophical aspects of an era and analyze
where we are heading to
Benjamin Franklin’s Bifocals 1785
Bernard Maitenaz’s Progressive
Multifocals (1953)
 A Few Lessons
Maitenaz’s lens is better/Worse than
Franklin’s.

There is no true/false technology.

There is only good/bad technology.

The judgments available are time-indexed and

relative.
 Connotations of Technology
• Devices
• Construction (Utopia)
• Destruction (Dystopia)
• Medicines (well being/treatment)
• Application of Science (post 1700 AD)
(Is/Should)
• Better life
• Power?
 Technology
• Technology distorts reality (Ancient Greeks)
– Technology manipulates nature

– Technology controls nature

• Samurais of Japan
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Rabindranath Tagore
 History of Technology
The contexts and situations behind a
particular technology.

The direct implications of technology in

society.
example: Alienation

The implications of those implications.

 Misconceptions

“Necessity is the mother of invention”

Misconceptions- Discontinuity Thesis
History of technology is discontinuous.

Individuals invented key artefacts without

precedence.

History of technology is history of these

inventions.
 Difference between need and
necessity

Necessity Need
 Two Contexts

• Cases where necessity/need triggers invention

• Cases where invention triggers necessity/need

 In Sum

Technology is not a result of fundamental need

or necessity. It is the result of constant
improvement of what existed.
Example
Where did the hammer come from?
Where did the hammer come from?
Where did the hammer come from?
 How to think like a historian of
technology?
• When you see an artefact, think that it is just
one among the series of artefacts of the same
kind.

– Whatever artefact you have with you, it’s kind is

constantly evolving.
– Therefore, history of technology is not
discontinuous.
 The big difference
• History of technology before and after
modernity (not modernism)
– Around 1700AD

• Technology is not the same before and after

modernity
– Techno-social- order
– Discipline and power
Jeremy Bentham (1748 -1832)
The Panopticon Prison (1700 AD)
Jeremy Bentham
The Panopticon Prison (1700 AD)
• Panopticon is an ideal architectural model of
modern disciplinary power. It is a technology
for a prison, built so that each inmate is
separated from and invisible to all the others
(in separate “cells”) and each inmate is always
visible to a monitor situated in a central tower.
Since inmates never know whether they are
being observed, they must act as if they are
always objects of observation. As a result,
control is achieved more by the internal
monitoring of those controlled than by heavy
physical constraints.
 Architecture
• Schools, Hospitals, Factories, Jails, Military
Barracks, Educational Institutes,….,contained
panopticon structure.
• Here, technology is employed to discipline our
body and mind.
• From the 1700s, most technology is nothing
other than a carrier of power that disciplines
us.
 What technology can do?
• Control human body’s nature/instinct.

• Intrusion into body’s natural behaviors.

• Discipline us and ask us what is preferable.

Technology can affect and carve our nature
• Technology will have impact over our
immediate emotional standards.

The post
The mobile phone
 Technology creates techno-social
systems
• Large data oriented networks like airports where
id cards are to be carried, a particular behavior is
expected from everyone part of the system.

• Public transports like metro railway where one

need to follow a particular pattern.

• Invasion into privacy: Design invades not only our

instincts but also our privacies.
 Technology, artificial objects….
• There are innumerable number of objects
around us which discipline us.

• The chair tells us how to sit.

• The clock tells us when to leave
• The bank tells us how to pay and when
• The institute tells us what to learn
• The constitution tells us how to behave
Discipline and Punish
Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
 Engineering and Power
• Engineering and technology is a way of
spreading and exercising power.
• Technology make us tied down to a kind of
discipline.

ATM cards, mobile phones, vehicles,

educational institutes, governments etc., are
all engineered designs or sets of designs which
propagate discipline and power.
 Simple example

Even though it’s a simple chair design,

one who uses it is reminded always as to
how to sit, how not to sit- Based on
the particular structure of the chair and context.
Even how to sit if the chair is in public space.

Each technology disciplines the user

 History of Technology
After 1700 contains:

Techno-social order
Discipline and power
Hidden implications
 Bruce Sterling’s Levels of Human-
World interaction

• Artifact -Hunters and Farmers

• Machines-Customers
• Products- Consumers
• Gizmos- End Users
• Spime- Wranglers
 History of Human-World Relationship

• History of Humans= History of Techno-social

• Each era of Techno-social brings different

techno-social-order
 Level 1
• Artifact: Simple hand made thing, powered by
muscle

• People within the world of artifacts are-

Hunters and Farmers
An example of Artifact
 Level 2

• Machines- Complex, precisely proportioned

artifacts with many integral parts

• People within the world of machines are-

Customers
Example of Level 2
 Level 3

• Products- Widely distributed, commercially

available objects

• People within the world of products are-

Consumers
Example of Level 3
 Level 4

• Gizmos- Highly unstable, user alterable, have

brief lifespan, containing a lot of information.

• People within the world of gizmos are- End

Users
 Examples of Level 4
• Operating Systems, interfaces, world wide
web, etc.

• Social networking interfaces

• Videogames, Softwares, gadgets like tabs and

laptops
 Level 5

• Spimes- Data with powerful informational

support,

• People within the world of Spimes are-

Wranglers
 Examples of Level 5

• Radiofrequency id tags.
• Unique information loaded chips which are
traceable.

• Large amount of data control and information

processing with infinite scope

• Real good spimes are yet to appear in this world

 Modernism in Design

• The Origin: The UTOPIA

Perfect world with no conflicts

Technologists and Designers as

saviors
 Level 3- The Dawn of Modernity
• A huge conceptual shift of priority from
“Appearance” to “Function” happened in
architecture

Shape, ornamental beauty, material used etc.

were sidelined by giving priority to function.
 Bruce Sterling’s levels of Human-
World Relationship

1. Artifact -Hunters and Farmers

2. Machines-Customers
3. Products- Consumers

Modernism
 Modernism (1914)

Modernism in architecture emerged in the

aftermath of the First World War – a period when
people dreamed of a new world free of conflict,
greed and social inequality: The Utopia.

World war urged to see and plan for a better

world. These utopians together with the
economic conditions of the age set up the
conditions for the Bauhaus.

A belief that the human condition could be

healed by new approaches design
 Modernism (1914-1939)
• Many different styles can be characterized as
Modernist, but they shared certain underlying
principles:

1) a belief that design and technology could

transform society
2) a rejection of history and applied ornament
3)a preference for abstraction
 Modernism (1914-1939)

4) priority to function
5) mass production and mass market
 Modernism

• Focused on the most basic elements of daily

life –

housing and furniture,

domestic goods and clothing
 The Modern Life

• A world entirely recreated in terms of the machine:

Everything from clothing to architecture, from music to

theatre.

• The modernists celebrated the energy, violence and

dynamism of urban life. They believed that
mechanization could improve daily life and transform
the products of the designed world
 Modern = Machine
• Modernist designers saw the mechanization and
of life as a key objective of a new society.

• Advocating machine-based mass production

(Fordism) as the means of achieving a better
world, they applied it to everything, from the
production of art to the design of kitchens.

• domestic objects and buildings, were conceived

as machines or the result of machine
manufacture
 Modern= Factory

• The factory as a building type had special

meaning for Modernists. It was a site of
production and was associated with the
worker. The factory was considered honest,
practical and egalitarian.

• However, the factory product became the

opposite of art.
 Modernism

• Prior to modernism, art did not end with

design.

• In modernism, art ends with design.

 Social Change: Housing

• Modernist architects set out to industrialize the

building process. New construction techniques
and the use of materials such as steel.

• Concrete and glass would reduce costs and so

allow more housing to be built. They admired
steel for its tensile strength, concrete for its
resistance and glass for its ability to admit light.
 Promoting Modernism

• Modernist graphic design and advertising

came to be known as the New Typography

• sans-serif lettering
• Abstract painting
Example: Sitting on Air
Marcel Breuer (1928)
Example- Sitting on air Osko-
Deichmann (2009)
 Sitting on air

• two legs rather than four (Function influences form)

• use of tubular steel (Cost cutting)

• shiny, chromed surfaces and mechanistic, hygienic

appearance

• Visually and physically light

• Weightlessness and transparency

Lets Contrast it….(Sitting on wood)
Pre-Modernist Era (1800)
 Modernism: Concern for Health
• Health was seen as a metaphor for a bright
new future.

In practical terms, it meant that buildings,

both private and communal, should have
modern amenities. These ranged from indoor
toilets and hygienic kitchens, to swimming
pools, gyms and sun decks.
 Modernism

• The connection between health and the body can

be seen throughout the mass media and the
visual arts of the early Twentieth century.
Everywhere there were images of sports men and
women, dancers and gymnasts, swimmers and
sunbathers. These images were not merely a
celebration of health and exercise. Often they
had deeper social and political resonances.
 Summary
• Derive Form from Function
Form: Shape, materials used, colors etc.

• Function is related to Utopia: the imagination of a new

world, this is the precondition for technology in
modernism. Engineer has to be an Utopian

• Design for mass production in factories for maximum

users

• Light, transparent designs where costs are minimal

Old Chicago Water Tower 1869
Wainwright Building 1891
 Louis Sullivan 1896
“It is the pervading law of all things
organic and inorganic, of all things
physical and metaphysical, of all
things human and superhuman, of all
true manifestations of the head, of the
heart, of the soul, that the life is
recognizable in its expression, that
form ever follows function. This is
the law.”
(“The tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” p 4)
 Form Follows Function

“ It is of the very essence of every

problem that it contains and
suggests its own solution.”
(Ibid, p 1)
 Form Follows Function
The design of an object (its form)
should include only that which is
necessary according to its intended
functions
Modernist Glass Vase (1900)
Reactions to Modernism
Alvar Aalto 1936
 When you get time

• http://www.vam.ac.uk/

• “The tall Office Building Artistically

Considered” by Louis Sullivan
 A quick example

PRE MODERNISM
(late 1740s)

MODERNISM
(Early 1900s)
Victorian door knob
Gropius’ door knob
 Form Versus Function
• Louis Sullivan (Architecture)

• Walter Gropius (Architecture)

The Bauhaus
 COMPARISON
PRE MODERN MODERNISM

Decorative Non-Decorative
More Less
Ornament in Form Function
Lineage to History Dissent to History
Walter Gropius (1883-1969)
Faguswerk in Alfeld-an-der-Leine-
1914
Diesel Railway Locomotive car for
Russian rail road-1912
 The Bauhaus
The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city
of Weimar by German architect Walter
Gropius (1883–1969)

It was a direct dissent to pre modern ideology,

namely the gothic revival
 The Bauhaus Engineer

• Engineer is different from a craftsman or artist

• Engineer designs for mass production. Starting

with the simplest tools and least complicated
jobs, he gradually acquires ability to master more
intricate problem and to work with machinery,
while at the same time he keeps in touch with the
entire process of production from start to finish.
 The Bauhaus

• Engineering is not about how something looks

• Engineering is about how something works

 The Bauhaus

Simplicity, Symmetry, Angularity,

Abstraction, Consistency, Unity,
Organization, Economy, Subtlety,
Continuity, Regularity, Sharpness
Monochromaticity
The Bauhaus Building at Dessau
 ASSIGNMENT
1. Pick a technology
2. Identify the techno-social order
3. Identify whether it supports discontinuity thesis
4. Describe whether it came out of a fundamental
necessity- Justify your answer
5. Describe the context of its origin (year, who
invented)
6. Conduct a small scale research in the internet
and write down the changes it brought
 Structure
1. 1 page (approximately 500 words)
2. Times New Roman, Font size 12
3. Line spacing 1.5
4. Send as an email attachment
 Guidelines
• Do not plagiarize. You are allowed to read
from the internet but write in your own
language. For plagiarism, you will be awarded
‘-5’ points.

• Deadline is 2nd October 2017

 Example
• Technology: The wheel
• Techno-social order: Artefact- Hunters and
Farmers
• It does not support discontinuity thesis
• It was not a necessity: Justify
• Context of origin: 5000 years at least. In the
area extending from Tigris to the Rhine river.
• Changes it brought: ----------------
 Common Mistakes

• Modernism and Bauhaus are not styles, they

are world- views or ideologies.
 Modernism

• Is a way of looking at the world

• An ideology, or conviction

“Imagine that you are wearing a lens.”

 Bauhaus legacy today

• IKEA
• Volkswagen factory in Dresden
• Riverside Plaza, Minneapolis
 Modernism- Consequences

• Mass Production Universal,

Global
• All men are equal, the same product can be
used by all men, globalism
• There are absolute universal values
• There is one and only one way of experiencing
the world, and that is same for everyone
 Modernism- Consequences

• Eurocentrism
• Logocentrism
• Androcentrism
 Reactions and frustrations

• Is there only one way of experiencing the

world for everyone?
• Why cant the world be represented
pluralistically?
• Is there only one, true, singular and absolute
stance on each issues?
 Modernism-
What happened at the intellectual
level?
• Faith/Custom
Reason/Individual values

Search for the absolute, the ideal

 Reactions and frustrations

• Is there only one way of experiencing the

world for everyone?
• Why cant the world be represented
pluralistically?
• Is there only one, true, singular and absolute
stance on each issues?
 Postmodernism (1970-1990)

• Postmodernism is a drastic departure from

modernism’s utopian visions.

• Complexity and Contradiction

 A celebration of plural experience

There is not just one grand narrative but

several disparate ways of representing reality.

Film, Literature, Painting, Graphic Design,

Architecture,………………….
Carlton cabinet, 1981
Design: Ettore Sottsass
 Postmodernism

• Dystopia: an imagined place or state in which

everything is unpleasant or bad, a far-from-
perfect degenerate future is imagined.

Method of Post Modernism: NO Method

There is no “absolute” for anything
“Anything Goes”
 Postmodernism
• Technologists salvaged and distressed
materials to produce an aesthetic of urban
apocalypse

• “The Designer Decade”

• Economy boomed, modernism was outdated,
Vivid color, theatricality and exaggeration
became the styles.
Alessandro Mendini – Destruction of
Lassu Chair-1974
 Postmodernism
The first step in the formation of postmodernism was
an attack on what had come before. The Italian radical
designer Alessandro Mendini was the editor of the
design magazine Casabella at the time. He created an
‘ideal’ and very simple chair, a pure form, and set it on
top of a set of steps, like a throne. This was a symbol of
the perfect object. He then brought it to a stone quarry
and set it on fire, capturing the process with
photographs. One of these images was used on the
cover of Casabella - this was art direction, as well as
design. The title Lassú means ‘up there’ and refers to
the chair going up in flames. This act of destruction
announces a new moment in design: like a phoenix,
something is being burned but something new may
grow from the ashes.
Ron Arad- Concrete Stereo- 1983
 Postmodernism
• The punk idea that ruined, smashed, and torn
designs could be a new kind of statement. Ron
Arad, an Israel-born designer working in
London came up with ‘pre-ruined’ Concrete
Stereo, made of reinforced concrete with
electronic components, looks like it came from
an archaeological dig or science fiction film.
 Alessandro Mendini
• He founded a group called Studio Alchymia –
the name is a reference to medieval alchemy
and magic. This collective of designers
produced strange and compelling objects,
usually by transforming an existing object or
combining several unrelated ideas into a
single, surprising thing.

• Past and future in one thing

Frank Schreiner -Consumer's Rest
chair-1990
 Tutorial: Practice
• Describe a technology that is available today
but falls in the hunters and farmers-artefacts
technosocial order
 Tutorial: Practice
• Describe a technology that is available today
but falls in the customer-machines
technosocial order
 Tutorial: Practice
• Describe a technology that is available today
but falls in the consumer-products
technosocial order
 Tutorial: Practice
• Describe a technology whose intended
function was different than the current one
 Tutorial: Practice
• Describe a technology that was abandoned or
out of use.
 Postmodernism
• Rule breaking (Don’t adhere to any strict
method of design)
• Dissent to modernism
• Celebration of diversity
• Dystopia
• “More” and “Complex”
'Nothing Continues to Happen‘- Howard
Meister-1980
Hilton Serving trolley- Javier Mariscal-1981
Sugar Bowl-Alessandro Mendini-1981
Alessandro Mendini-Proust Chair-1978
Richard Sapper-The whistling Kettle-
1984
 Values

• Modernism- Functional Value

• Postmodernism- “Anything”
For example: Aesthetic, Fashion, Cultural etc.
 Studio Alchymia- The soul of
Postmodernism
“Representing alchemy and magic”

• Founded by Alessandro Guerriero in 1976, soon

Alessandro Mendini joined.

“Against Mass Production”

These engineers of Studio Alchymia wanted to

break away from the “Product-Consumer”
technoculture of modernism
 Studio Alchymia- The soul of
Postmodernist Technology
• Engineering must invoke surprise, an aesthetic shock
rather than an appreciation of function.

• Used included bright colors and decoration, and there

was a move away from the symmetry and abstraction
of modernist products to asymmetrical characteristics.

• Studio Alchimia was the stepping stone to the

Memphis Group of the 1980s. Ettore Sottsass, who
later helped form the Memphis Group, was an
important contributor to this movement
Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007)
The Memphis
 Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007)
The Memphis

• Italian architect and designer

• Created furniture, jewelry, glass, lighting and
office machines.
• "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis
Blues Again" by Bob Dylan. Listening to this
gave the idea of naming the group
“Memphis”.
Ettore Sottsass- ValentineTypewriter-
1969
 Ettore Sottsass

REASON Vs Emotion

× 
 Ettore Sottsass

• India inspired Sottsass to believe that

emotion, plurality and subjective experience
carry more weight in technology than reason

• Reason leads to abstraction and universality

• Emotion leads to diversity and decoration
 Memphis
"Memphis is like a very strong drug. You
cannot take too much. I don't think anyone
should put only Memphis around: It's like
eating only cake.”
Ettore Sottsass (1986)
What is technology for postmodernists

• Technology is a statement, and an expression.

• Technology should be short lived, not eternal.
• Each technology offers a subjective experience.
• Technology is not for universal mass production.
• Function should not only be given priority.
• Aesthetic properties, subjective experiences are
prioritized over function.
Heuristic Principles from
History of Technology
 Useful = Good ???
Or
Beautiful = Good ???
• From several experiments conducted, it was
found that the objects which were preferred in
terms of appearance by the perceivers were also
judged as good (irrespective of whether they are
good or not).

• Are beautiful experiences good?

• Are beautiful objects good?
• Why do we have a preference for appearence?
 Heuristic Principles from History of
Technology
The lesson from postmodernism is known as the aesthetic-
usability effect

• Example: E.g: Nokia

Nokia was one of the first companies to realize that cellular
phones require more than basic communication features.
Cellular phones need to be recharged frequently, carried
around and often suffer from signal loss. Nokia designers
thought that aesthetic designs would help create positive
relationship with user.

Color, customizable profiles, ringtones etc.

 Baby Face Bias

• Tendency to judge objects with baby face features as

more attractive.

Qualities: Innocent, honest etc.

Features: Round, large eyes, small noses, high

foreheads.

E.g: cartoon characters for kids, the Volkswagen

beattle.
 Cognitive Dissonance
• A tendency to seek consistency among
attitudes, thoughts and beliefs. When a
person’s attitudes, beliefs and thoughts are
inconsistent, cognitive dissonance happens.

Dissonance and consonance

E.g: Marketing and advertising. Trial periods in

softwares.
 The ‘80/20’ Rule- Pareto’s Rule
• Eighty percentage of a product’s features
involves twenty percentage of its features.
• Eighty percentage of effects generated by any
large system are caused by twenty percentage
of the variables in that system.

• A high percentage of effects in any large

system are caused by a low percentage of
variables in the system.
 The ‘80/20’ Rule
The Cases:
• 80 percent of a product's usage involves 20 percent of its
features.
• 80 percent of a town's traffic is on 20 percent of its roads.
• 80 percentage of the nation’s wealth is possessed by
twenty percentage population.

If the critical 20 percent of a product's features are used 80

percent of the time, technology and testing of resources
should focus primarily on those features.
Noncritical functions that are part of the less-important 80
percent should be minimized or even removed altogether
from the object.
 Example:
• Graphic user interfaces conceal most of their
functions to drop down menus. This reduces the
complexity of the display, but also makes
frequently accessed functions more difficult to
access.

• Use of the 80/20 rule.

Engineers identify the critical twenty percentage
of the frequently used functions and makes them
available in toolbars.
 Accessibility
• Objects should be designed to be usable without
modification, by as many people as possible.
• Four characteristics of accessible designs:
– Perceptibility
– Operability
– Simplicity
– Forgiveness

Example: Certain large elevators