[ ] A. M. Weinberg, "Will Technology Replace Social Engineering?," Fifteenth Annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, 29 Apr 1966 (Harvard Club of New York: Institute of General Semantics).Weinberg’s second speech on the topic was more cautiously titled, and was reprinted in numerous journals and magazines and widely anthologized in university texts: "Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?," University of Chicago Alumni Award speech, 11 Jun 1966.
[ ] E.g. Stewart Brand, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987).
[ ] https://books.google.com/ngrams, consulted June 26, 2017; J. -B. Michel et al., "Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books," Science 331, no. 6014 (2011).
[ ] See R. G. Wilson, D. H. Pilgrim, and D. Tashjian, The Machine Age in America 1918-1941 (New York: Brooklyn Museum/Harry N. Abrams, 1986); R. Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980).
[ ] Technical Alliance, "The Technical Alliance: What It Is, and What It Proposes," (New York 1918). See also W. H. G. Armytage, The Rise of the Technocrats: A Social History (Milton Keynes: Routledge, 1965).
[ ] Charles H. Wood, "The Birth of the Technical Alliance," New York World, 20 Feb 1921.
[ ] Sean F. Johnston, "Technological Parables and Iconic Imagery: American Technocracy and the Rhetoric of the Technological Fix," History and Technology 33 (2) (2017): 196-219.
[ ] M. King Hubbert, "Lesson 22: Industrial Design and Operating Characteristics," in Technocracy Study Course (New York: Technocracy Inc, 1945, pp. 242-68.
[ ] Paul A. Baran, "Review of Meier, Richard L, Science and Economic Development: New Patterns of Living," American Economic Review, no. 47 (6) (1956): 1019-21, p. 1021.
[ ] See, for example, Richard L. Meier, Modern Science and the Human Fertility Problem (New York: Wiley, 1959); Planning for an Urban World: The Design of Resource-Conserving Cities (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1974); "Late-Blooming Societies Can Be Stimulated by Information Technology," Futures 32, no. 2 (2000).
[ ] See Donald A. Strickland, Scientists in Politics: The Atomic Scientists Movement, 1945-46 (Lafayette: Purdue University Studies, 1968).
[ ] E.g. Harvey Brooks, "The Evolution of U.S. Science Policy," in Technology, R&D, and the Economy, ed. L. R. Bruce, C. E. Barfield (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1996).
[ ] A M. Weinberg, "Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 22, no. 10 (1966):4-7, p.5.
[ ] Sean F. Johnston, The Neutron's Children: Nuclear Engineers and the Shaping of Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
[ ] A. M. Weinberg, Reflections on Big Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967).
[ ] A. M. Weinberg, The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer (New York: AIP Press, 1994), p.150. On the gestation of his ideas, see Sean F. Johnston, "Alvin Weinberg and the Promotion of the Technological Fix," Technology and Culture 59, no. 2 (2018, forthcoming).
[ ] A. M. Weinberg, "Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 22, no. 10 (1966): 4-7 p.7.
[ ] A. M. Weinberg and J. C. Bresee, "On the Air-Conditioning of Low-Cost Housing," Weinberg archives, Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge (CMOR) Cab 5 Drawer 4, Chron 1968-1 (1968); Weinberg to J. S. Foster Jr, letter, 7 Mar 1967, CMOR Cab 5 Drawer 4, Chron 1967-1. As Weinberg realized, his Vietnam wall – like Hadrian’s Wall across northern Britain, the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall and Donald Trump’s proposed Mexican wall – is a technological fix for controlling population movements.
[ ] A. M. Weinberg, "Social Problems and National Socio-Technical Institutes," Applied Science and Technological Progress: A Report to the Committee on Science and Astronautics, US House of Representatives, By the National Academy of Sciences (1967): 415-34; Weinberg to H. Brooks, letter, 17 Jun 1966, CMOR Cab 5 Drawer 4, Chron 1966-2.
[ ] Stephen L. Del Sesto, "Wasn't the Future of Nuclear Energy Wonderful?," in Imagining Tomorrow: History, Technology, and the American Future, ed. J. J. Corn (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1986): 58-76.
[ ] For a nuanced account of the socio-political context of spaceflight, see Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1985).
[ ] On the enrichment of staple foods with vitamins, see M. Ackerman, "The Nutritional Enrichment of Flour and Bread: Technological Fix or Half-Baked Solution," in The Technological Fix: How People Use Technology to Create and Solve Problems, ed. L. Rosner (New York: Routledge, 2004): 75-92. A more recent example is “golden rice” bioengineered to produce beta-carotene as a technological fix for malnutrition from vitamin deficiency.
[ ] The socio-technical system of preserving, transporting and consuming frozen foods, for example, was largely a post-Second World War development involving new technologies (notably refrigeration and microwave-cooking) co-evolving with social and cultural changes (e.g. declining proportion of primary home-makers and rise of convenience foods) [C. P. Mallet (ed.), Frozen Food Technology (London, 1993)]. Dietary aids included a rapidly expanding variety of over-the-counter products to increase metabolism, reduce appetite or fat absorption, and exercise machines to burn calories [T. Maguire and D. Haslam, The Obesity Epidemic and Its Management (London: Pharmaceutical Press, 2009)].
[ ] Shelley McKellar, "Artificial Hearts: A Technological Fix More Monstrous Than Miraculous?," in The Technological Fix: How People Use Technology to Create and Solve Problems, ed. Lisa Rosner (New York: Routledge, 2004): 13-30. Other technological fixes for health include gastric bands and liposuction.
[ ] E.g. “technology-enhanced learning” and “technology-mediated communication” are growing industries, and the Apple slogan “there’s an app for that” offers software solutions for human needs.
[ ] E.g. F. H. Chapelle, "Bioremediation of Petroleum Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Ground Water: The Perspectives of History and Hydrology," Groundwater 37, no. 1 (2005): 122-32; J. Gabrys, "Plastic and the Work of the Biodegradable," in Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic, ed. J. Gabrys, G. Hawkins, and M. Michael (New York: Routledge, 2013): 208-27; Royal Society, "Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance and Uncertainty" (Royal Society, 2009).
[ ] Engineering disciplines have adapted to the contemporary environment of terrorist threats by creating special-interest groups to promote security technologies and funding for technological fixes. Among them is the Homeland Security group of SPIE, the optical engineering society, which aims to “stimulate and focus the optics and photonics technology community's contributions to enhance the safety, counter homeland threats, and improve the sense of well being” [SPIE 2003, http://www.spie.org/Announcements/index.html#homeland, consulted 14 May 2003; page no longer extant].
[ ] Max Oelschlaeger, "The Myth of the Technological Fix," Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 10, no. 1 (1979): 43-53.
[ ] E.g. Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
[ ] Rachel Carson Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
[ ] International incidents included spillages from the oil tankers Amoco Cadiz (1978) and Atlantic Empress (1979). Later incidents, such as the Exxon Valdez (1989) and Deep Water Horizon (2010), fueled public debate about societal reliance on large-scale technological systems, ironically while promoting technological fixes for avoiding or cleaning up after such accidents.
[ ] Eugene M. Burns and Kenneth E. Studer, "Reply to Alvin M. Weinberg," Research Policy 5 (1976): 201-2, p. 202.
[ ] Arne Naess, "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement. A Summary," Inquiry 16 (1973): 95-100.
[ ] Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as If People Mattered (London: Blond & Briggs, 1973).
[ ] Alan R. Drengson, "The Sacred and the Limits of the Technological Fix," Zygon 19, no. 3 (1984); The Practice of Technology: Exploring Technology, Ecophilosophy, and Spiritual Disciplines for Vital Links (Albany NY: State University of New York, 1995).
[ ] A. M. Weinberg, "Nuclear Power and Public Perception," in Nuclear Reactions: Science and Trans-Science (Washington DC: American Institute of Physics, 1992): 273-89
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