Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society
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The Technological Fix
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 Peña (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"
Comment: Ritchie Garrison (University of Delaware)
1:00-2:30 INSTITUTIONS SEEKING FIXES...
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"
Comment: Janet F. Davidson (National Museum of American History)
3:00-5:00 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"
Comment: Lisa Rosner (Richard Stockton College)
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"
Comment: TBA
11:15-12:30 CLOSING KEYNOTE
Thomas Hughes (University of Pennsylvania, Emeritus)