The Technological Fix

Conference at the Hagley

Conference Announcement

Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society
Hagley Museum and Library
October 4-5, 2002

Friday, October 4, 2002

  • 9:30-11:30 OBJECTS AS FIXES
    -- Shelley McKellar (National Museum of American History) "Artificial Hearts-A Technological Fix More Monstrous than Miraculous?"
    -- Carolyn Thomas de la Pena (University of California, Davis) "Plugging in to Modernity: Henry Gaylord Wilshire's I-ON-A-CO and the Electric Body"
    -- Angela Cartland (Australian National University) "The Cash Register from 'Thief Catcher' to 'Automatic Preacher' to Business Machine, 1879-1929"
  • 1:00-3:00 INSTITUTIONS SEEKING FIXES...
    -- Edward W. Constant (Carnegie-Mellon University) "Born of Corruption and Sired by Arbitrary Power," or Why Technological Fixes are Always also Social and Political
    -- Shane Hamilton (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) "Long Haul Trucking and the Technopolitics of Industrial Agriculture, 1945-1970"
    -- Michael Ackerman (University of Virginia) "The Nutritional Enrichment of Flour and Bread: Technological Fix or Half-Baked Solution"
  • 3:30-5:30 ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES
    -- James R. Fleming (Colby College) "Fixing the Weather and Climate: Military and Civilian Schemes for Cloud Seeding and Climate Engineering"
    -- Timothy LeCain (Montana State University) "When Everybody Wins Does the Environment Lose? Historical Case Studies in the Limits of 'Eco-Efficiency'"
    -- Frank Uekotter (Universitaet Bielefeld) "Solving Air Pollution Problems Once and For All: The Potential and the Limits of Technological Fixes"

Saturday, October 4, 2002

  • 9:00-11:00 CULTURE AND SYSTEMS-- Thomas Haigh (University of Pennsylvania), "The Fix is Information, Now What Was The Problem?"
    -- Jim Tobias (New York University) "Technology and Disability"
    -- Warren Belasco (University of Maryland-Baltimore County) "Synthetic Arcadias: Dreams of 'Air Food,' Meal Pills, and Algae Burgers"
  • 11:15-12:30 CLOSING KEYNOTE
    Thomas Hughes (University of Pennsylvania, Emeritus)

All sessions take place in the Soda House of the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. Registration is free but required. Meals will be available for a modest cost. For registration and lodging information and the final program please contact Carol Ressler Lockman, Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, Hagley Museum and Library, PO Box 3630, Wilmington DE 19807, 302-658-2400, ext. 243, or crl@udel.edu.