Theory and Narrative in the History of Technology: Response
John R. Law · Technology and Culture · 1991
For the last four years I have been collecting material about a major British aircraft project, the TSR.2 tactical strike and reconnaissance aircraft. This project, which was first conceived in about 1956 and was canceled amid much acrimony in 1965, employed at least 20,000 people at its height. As a part of my study I have read all the secondary material I can find, I have seen a great deal of primary source material of one kind or another, and I have interviewed more than thirty of the major participants. During the last eighteen months I have been writing this material up. This has, I confess, been a particularly difficult exercise. One of the reasons for this has been that it is possible to write it up in different ways. Let me simplify and say that I could write it up as critical narrative history. Alternatively, I could use parts of that narrative to explore more theoretically oriented questions that have to do with technology and the way in which it interacts with social relations.