TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY IN THE 20TH CENTURY

TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY IN THE 20TH CENTURY

                           Peter F. Drucker

Technological activity during the 20th century has changed in its structure, methods, and scope. It is this qualitative change which explains even more than the tremendous rise in the volume of work the emergence of technology in the 20th century as central in war and peace, and its ability within a few short decades to remake man's way of life all over the globe.

Throughout the 19th century technological activity, despite tremendous success, was still in its structure almost entirely what it had been through the ages: a craft. It was practiced by individuals here, there, and yonder, usually working alone and without much formal education. By the middle of the 20th century technological activity has become thoroughly professional, based, as rule, on specific university training. It has become largely specialized, and is to a very substantial extent being carried out in a special institution—the research laboratory, particularly the industrial research laboratory--devoted exclusively to technological innovation.

Each of these changes deserves a short discussion. To begin with, few of the major figures in 19th-century technology received much formal education. The typical inventor was mechanic who began his apprenticeship at age fourteen or earlier. The few who had gone to college had not, as a rule, been trained in technology or science but were liberal arts students, trained primarily in Classics. But in general, technological invention and the development industries based on new knowledge were in the hands of craftsmen and artisans with little scientific education but a great deal of mechanical genius. These men considered themselves mechanics and inventors, certainly not "engineers" or "chemists" & let alone "scientists."

The 19th century was also the era of technical-university building.  Still, in the opening decades of the 20th century the momentum of technical progress was being carried by the self-taught mechanic without specific technical or scientific education.

Technological work has thus become a profession. The inventor has become an "engineer," the craftsman, a "professional."In part this is only a reflection of the uplifting of the whole educational level of the Western world duringthelast150 years. The college-trained engineer or chemist in the Western world today is not more educated, considering the relative standard of his society, that the craftsman of 1800 (who, in a largely illiterate society, could read and write).It is our entire society--and not the technologist alone--that has become formally educated and professionalized. But the professionalization of technological work points up the growing complexity of technology and the growth of scientific and technological knowledge. It is proof of a change in attitude toward technology, an acceptance by society, government, education, and business that this work is important, that it requires a thorough grounding in scientific knowledge, and, above all, that it requires many more capable people that "natural genius" could produce.

Technological work has become increasingly specialized, also, during the 20th century.  This professionalization and specialization have been made effective by the institutionalization of work in the research laboratory. The research laboratory—and especially the industrial research laboratory--has become the carrier of technological advance in the 20^th century. It is increasingly the research laboratory, rather than the individual, which produces new technology. More and more, technological work is becoming a team effort in which the knowledge of a large number of specialists in the laboratory is brought to bear on a common problem and directed toward a joint technological result.

During the 19th century the "laboratory" was simply the place where work was done that required technical knowledge beyond that of the ordinary mechanic. In industry, testing and plant engineering were the main functions of the laboratory; research was done on the side, if at all. Similarly, the government laboratory during the 19th century was essentially place to test, and all the large government laboratories in the world today (such as the Bureau of Standards in Washington) were founded for that purpose. In the 19th-century College or university, the laboratory was used primarily for teaching rather than for research.

Before World War I the research laboratory was still quite rare. Between World War I and World War II it became standard in a number of industries, primarily the chemical, pharmaceutical, electrical, and electronics industries. Since World War II research activity has become as much of a necessity in industry as a manufacturing plant, and as central in its field as is the infantry soldier for defense, or the trained nurse in medicine.