SHOT 50th Anniversary Workshop: Washington, DC, fall of 2007

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Project Summary: SHOT 50th Anniversary WorkshopThis proposal seeks NSF assistance in developing a workshop to mark the 50th anniversary of thefounding of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). The workshop, to take place theday before the annual meeting in Washington, DC in the fall of 2007, will be hosted by theNational Academy of Engineering. Workshop sessions will examine and discuss scholarlytrends and patterns and new approaches to the field. The goal is to enable the Society to encourage its members and other scholars working on the history of technology to pursue work in the newest directions using the newest approaches and insights. Since technology is a vital and omnipresent element of modern society, SHOT also seeks to press beyond the internal and professional questions about the state of the field and extend the reach of our scholarship, connecting to the widest possible external audience. Thus the workshop will be structured and conducted in ways that help make our understandings of technology accessible to other groups that share an interest in, and concerns about, the interactions of technology and society. Thus the workshop has both scientific merit and broader impact, as the NSF expects.Scientific MeritThe scientific merit of this project lies in the effort to assess and evaluate the main contours of thehistory of technology, by devoting an entire day to discussions before the regular annual meeting.This arrangement allows the largest possible participation by historians of technology. Presenterswill represent the full diversity of the Society, as the workshop seeks to present excitingscholarship in terms of approaches and subjects. The participants will include both beginningand senior members of SHOT and visitors and guests from outside the history of technology. TheSociety will strongly encourage participation by graduate students through its travel grantprogram. The primary intent is to delineate promising areas and outstanding examples ofscholarship as SHOT and its members enter a sixth decade of existence.The Broader ImpactThe broader impact of this workshop resides only partially in the educational opportunity thatinevitably will result from the participation of a significant number of the Societys attendees inthis special event. As important is the Societys effort to reach out to scholars and experts inother fields of academic and in other professional organizations who share an interest intechnology but who have not been connected to SHOT specifically. The workshop will continuethe Societys attempts to renew and strengthen linkages to engineers and engineering, building abridge to the National Academy of Engineering, which will host the meeting. SHOT also willstrengthen linkages to scholars in other areas of history and the social sciences and to policymakers. As one SHOT member put it, our target audience (outside SHOT) should be that smallarmy of academics and intellectuals who are dealing with the real problems of the world and needthe kind of historical perspective that only we can provide. Or as another historian observed,this workshop is designed to explore the relevancy of the history of technology in the modernworld. To further this goal, the Society will produce an edited volume including the best papersfrom the workshop as a special issue of its journal, Technology and Culture. Moreover severalsessions will be videotaped so that they may be streamed on the Societys web page as part ofSHOTs expanding outreach effort using the WWW.