Of Bicycles, Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs is a book serving two mas~ers.

On the one

Bakelites, and Bulbs •h and, it is an advanced college text fulfilling its subtitle of' Toward a Theory
of Sociotechnical Change." On the other, it is three interesting tales of techno-
By Wiebe E. Bijker logical history. Overall, I enjoyed the book but wish its focus had been one or the
MIT Press, 1995, 380 pages other.
Wiebe E. Bijker, a professor of technology and society at the University of
Reviewed by: Limburg, has developed a complex model of the interactions between science,
technology, and society. The book uses three case studies to gradually teach the
Samantha Alper reader about this model and how it can be used to analyze social implications of
Samantha_Alper@hp. com technology. His model is qualitative; the best way to explain it is by tracing its
development through the book.
Unless you are a student of the social reconstruction of technology, skip the
introductory chapter. After a friendly beginning, outlining Bijker's reasons for
writing the book, the chapter describes the current state of the science-technol-
ogy-society (STS) field. I soon felt overpowered by the academic prose of the
overview.
The second chapter is the first of the case studies. It describes the history of
the bicycle from the running machine to the Safety bicycle, and shows how the
value of a machine lies in society's i/~terpretation of it. Most of the focus is on the
"Ordinary" bicycle, the large-wheeled bicycle of Victorian prints. Bijker convinc-
ingly argues how the Ordinary was both a working and a broken machine.
To its fans, the Ordinary was a way of showing off - - the fact that it was
difficult to master added to its value. To those who were more concerned about
injury, on the other hand, the Ordinary was an unsafe way to travel. For a num-
ber of years, the Ordinary and the Safety bicycle (direct antecedent of our mod-
ern bicycles) coexisted. It was not until riders of Safety bicycles started winning
bicycle races that the Safety bicycle started to sweep out the Ordinary. Society
defined the Safety bicycle as the "normal" bicycle and as the one that met the
criteria of what a bicycle should be.
The third chapter uses Bakelite to develop a theory of technological frames.
Bakelite was invented by Leo Baekeland, a chemist with a background in photo-
graphic paper, in 1907. Many chemists at the time were trying to find an im-
proved form of Celluloid. Celluloid was an early synthetic resin popular for things
such as buttons, but it had drawbacks such as flammability and a tendency to
deform at room temperature. Bijker considers why Baekeland, who had no par-
ticular interest in the Celluloid problem, should be the one to solve it. Bijker's
answer develops the idea of technological frames. A technological frame is the
viewpoint common to people interacting around a certain technology and com-
prises all elements that influence the interactions within a social group. A person's
inclusion in a technological frame can be weak or strong, and does not prevent
him from being a member of another technological frame.
The chemists working on Celluloid had a particular technological frame. Some
characteristics of their frame were their problem-solving strategy, which focused
on modification of the solvent in the reaction, and a general lack of chemical
theory. Experimental technique and process control by chemists in this frame
tended to be lax.
Baekeland, while familiar with the technological frame of the Celluloid chem-
ists, was more firmly rooted in the technological frame of the photochemist. An
important characteristic of that frame is a problem-solving strategy, which fo-
cuses on mapping out variables. For instance, he closely controlled his experi-
ments for the amount of light, temperature, and humidity. Also, while working
on photochemistry, he had learned to make radical changes to a process one at a
time, much as programmers do when debugging. Combined, these traits of a

36 Computersand Society, September 1998

different technological frame allowed him to recognize a breakthrough in the
Celluloid problem when it happened.
In the fourth chapter, Bijker uses the flourescent lamp to show how power
influences interactions between social groups. The flourescent lamp puts out a
light more similar to daylight than does an incandescent lamp, and is also more
efficient. At the time that flourescent lamps started becoming popular in the
United States and Europe, the lighting market was controlled by the electric utili-
ties and the lamp manufacturers. Because they needed each other, neither the
utilities nor the manufacturers could completely control the conception of the
flourescent lamp.
The original use of the flourescent lamp was to provide low-intensity light for
coloring purposes, such as floral displays. Salesmen quickly realized that by com-
bining all tints into a white light, they could sell high-efficiency daylight lamps.
Customers were happy because the flourescent lamps consumed less power, keeping
their bills down--the same feature that worried electric utilities. In 1939 the
utilities successfully convinced the majority of the lamp manufacturers to stop
marketing the flourescent lamp as a high-efficiency daylight lamp and start devel-
oping it as a high-intensity daylight lamp. The only difference between the two is
that the high-intensity flourescent lamp produces light at 50 to 100 foot-candles,
and consumes more power.
The fifth chapter fills in the last details of Bijker's model, and explains some of
the ways the model can be used to predict sociotechnological change. First, Bijker
ties relevant social groups, artifacts, technological frames, and power relation-
ships together under the name "sociotechnological ensemble." Then Bijker ex-
plains how the techniques of reaching consensus can be used within the
micropolitics of the ensemble. Bijker hopes that when enough technological en-
sembles have been described, general rules of sociotechnological change can even-
tually be derived.
The most interesting insight to me is Bijker's configuration model. In any
technological ensemble, there can be zero, one, or more dominant technological
frames. When there is no dominant technological frame, there will be many
different innovations. When there is only one dominant frame, innovations are
mostly improvements in the current technology or process--no breakthroughs.
When there are two or more dominant frames, there is much argument and
appeal to outside parties, but not much progress.
This model can be seen in the history of personal computers. As many read-
ers will probably recall, in the early days of the PC, every computer was different.
Not only did many companies put out kits for the hobbyist, but engineers could
design their own computers (and operating systems) from basic parts. There
wasn't even a standard format for representing data. Out of this confusion came
the first Apple, floppy disks, hierarchical file organization, and user groups.
Soon the technological ensemble of the PC evolved to a point where it was
dominated by only a few technological frames. Commodore's Amiga division
specialized in multimedia. IBM focused on business uses. Apple aimed for the
non-technical market. Diskettes were specifically formatted for just one type of
computer, and interchange of information was very difficult. Software was pri-
marily available from the manufacturer of the hardware; differentiation in the
marketplace was achieved through a combination of hardware and software.
Starting with the introduction of the Windows operating environment, soft-
ware companies began to gain more power in the marketplace. Now we have one
dominant technological frame: Microsoft Windows on Intel x86-based PCs. Other
players are still around but fighting for survival or relegated to niche markets. In

Computers and Society, September 1998 37


TechnoscientificImaginaries:
Conversations, Profiles,
and Memoirs
By George E. Marcus, Editor
Late Editions 2: Cultural Studies
for the End of the Century,
University of Chicago Press, 1995
560 pages
Reviewed by: John Sullins
Philosophy Computers and Cognitive Science
Program, Binghamton Universi~.
38 Computersand Society, September 1998
this market, the major innovations are ones of degree, not of kind. We're seeing
faster CPUs, better sound cards, and better graphics cards, but very little in the
way of completely new and original ideas. There are some rumblings in the dis-
tance about network computers and wireless networks, but the innovations are
coming from outside the sociotechnological ensemble of the personal computer.
Overall, Bijker's model seems to be a useful template for explaining techno-
logical change after it has occurred. His goal, however, is to develop a model that
can predict as well as explicate. Although his model still appears a bit imprecise
for prediction, sociotechnological ensembles are a meaningful step towards the
goal. Bjiker's Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs is an enjoyable book that engagingly
describes the history of technology, while at the same time teaching his reader a
new way of looking at society. •
The viewsexpressedin this revieware thoseof tbe author, and do not necessarilyrqqectthoseof
the Hewlett-PackardCmporation.
A i s we approach the new millennia we are afforded an opportunity, artificial as
t may be, to critically examine the world that we find ourselves in at the end
of the century. It is in this sprit that the Late Editions series is presented.
Technoscientific Imaginaries is the second in this series and it addresses the
question, "What is it like to be a scientist at the end of the twentieth century?"
The result is a collection of eighteen essays, interviews and ethnographies focus-
ing on the cultural impact of science and technology. The authors are an impres-
sive array of researchers in the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, science
and technology studies, medical ethics, and history and philosophy of science.
As one would expect from a large anthology such as this, the reader is treated
to a number of different styles of presentation. The various offerings include
everything from interviews and conversations with leading scientists, to an al-
most literary account of the last days of an unnamed visionary research facility in
the Silicon Valley. What unifies these diverse entries is that they all attempt to
explore the politics of knowledge surrounding the practice of science and high
technology. The staggering achievements of our technoscience in the last century
along with the complex changes in our society that these achievements have
wrought, is one of the more important subjects for academic study. 7~chnoscientific
Imaginaries is a worthy addition to this field.
The vast majority of the articles in this volume are written in the tradition of
cultural anthropology. One of the more interesting trends in cultural anthropol-
ogy has been the broadening of its focus away from the exclusive study of "primi-
tive" cultures to one that returns the scrutiny once leveled only on "others" back
towards ourselves and our own modern technoscientific society.
Michael M. Fischer presents an essay discussing this trend--its flaws as well
as its promise, possibility and utility. The discomfort that modern scientists feel
when the tables are turned and they become the objects of study is nicely illus-
trated in Hugh Gusterson's article that describes his fieldwork at Lawrence
Livermore Laboratories. In this article Gusterson engages one of the researchers
at this lab on her choice of a career in nuclear weapons science even though she
has relatives who experienced the horror of Hiroshima.
There is an interesting ethnography dealing with the social changes in a de-
fense contractor as the company upgrades its twenty-year-old computer assisted
design software. This ethnography helps to illustrate that the software infrastruc-