Alvin Weinberg and the Promotion of the Technological Fix
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: The term technological fix, coined by technologist/administrator Alvin Weinberg in 1965, vaunted engineering innovation as a generic tool for circumventing problems commonly conceived as social, political, or cultural. A longtime Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, government consultant, and essayist, Weinberg also popularized the term big science to describe national goals and the competitive funding environment after the Second World War. Big science reoriented towards technological fixes, he argued, could provide a new "Apollo project" to address social problems of the future. His ideas-most recently echoed in "solutionism"-have channeled confidence and controversy ever since. This article traces the genesis and promotion of the concept by Weinberg and his contemporaries. It argues that, through the concept, the marginal politics and technological confidences of interwar scientists and technocrats were repositioned as mainstream notions closer to the heart of big science policy.
Source: Technology and Culture
Author: Sean F. Johnston
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: University of Chicago
OpenAlex ID: W2733335002