Technology and Culture

The production of this issue coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic unfolding across the globe. The health crisis has focused our minds on what we as scholars could thankfully still do from home in an ICT-rich environment, while others could not. Front-line personnel in healthcare, along with warehouse, food-processing, and delivery employees made it possible for us to work in the safety of our homes: networking with and facilitating a global network of scholars. Crises like Covid-19 bring into focus what is usually hidden from view. The technological history of flawed utopias— futures where innovations like information age technologies promised to be the answer to all social ills—should remind us that any kind of innovation has unequal benefits. Airplanes making the world accessible for elites carry the virus; the Internet’s ability to share information in the widest possible fashion has been the conveyer belt of conspiracy theories, as well as the favorite tool of autocratic regimes to quell dissent. Technology is thus a two-edged sword.

This issue comes to you at a time when the topic of racial inequality is occupying center stage in the public debate, as historic numbers of protesters take to the streets, beginning in the United States after the murder of George Floyd. The debate and the protests are now global: what does racial inequality mean in the context of colonial legacies? Technology is part of that story. In the United States, militarized police forces armed with assault weapons and ICT-technologies like body cameras enforce but bear witness to police brutality in new ways. Space technologies like remote sensing, GIS, and GPS paired with smartphones help farmers in India and the Sahel increase their crop yields, but governments also use these tools to kill their enemies with unprecedented precision. In nineteenth-century Europe, trains crossed borders, carried food, and helped emigrants escape pogroms and persecution; the reverse was also true: the train system became a cog in the killing machines of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Technologies can be tools to both maintain and undermine inequalities as social movements use them in unintended ways. Technology, though, is not just politics by other means, as scholars of technopolitics like Gabrielle Hecht, [End Page ix] Paul Edwards, and Anique Hommels argue. Technologies and political practices produce new forms of power and agency that shape a world of inequality in ways that are hard to “un-make.” As historians of technology, we are in a position to offer the much-needed reflection, context, and longterm perspectives on our contemporary challenges. As incoming editor, I extend an invitation to continue this debate within the journal’s pages.

Finally, this issue also has been produced at a time of transition in editorial leadership. We are grateful for Suzanne Moon and her team’s excellent work over the past decade. After sixty years, the journal is still standing on the broad shoulders of Mel Kranzberg, whose expansive vision continues to inspire and whose large shoes subsequent editors have sought to fill. Moon has succeeded in broadening the journal’s geographical coverage, in creating a nurturing environment for emerging scholarship, and in devoting attention to early career scholars has generated a wealth of research articles. Under her guidance, T&C has doubled in size in terms of sheer scholarship production. In the early days, the journal averaged twenty-five research articles a year, while today T&C publishes close to fifty—a rich harvest indeed. Moon also took the lead in creating Technology’s Stories—the site that makes technology scholarship in a range of formats available to all without a paywall. We are indebted to her achievement in making the journal a place where scholars find a welcoming home for their scholarly work. Under her guidance, the journal represents a vibrant community of scholars with an ever expanding range of knowledge.

It falls to us to protect what is precious about the journal, while looking forward as our publishing environment alters rapidly and requires new responses. One area demanding our attention is nurturing our community of readers. Reading habits are changing for several reasons. The exploding volume of scholarly work poses...