Scholars Award: Calculating the American Way: Computing Productivity in Transatlantic Relations

该项目调查了从20世纪20年代到60年代美国生产力技术和文化的跨大西洋转移，重点是它们在德国的适应。为了更好地理解美国资本主义在跨大西洋关系中的作用，本书考察了生产力如何塑造了现代工业化国家特有的劳资关系。这项研究的结果最终将在一本书中出版，这本书将为有关经济竞争力的问题提供一个历史的视角。它将促进对大西洋两岸自由主义和社会经济制度的历史、文化和政治根源的更深入理解，并将评估它们的相对优势和劣势。研究结果将有助于阐明当前的问题，例如地球仪的劳工标准如何影响国家竞争力。PI将在学术会议上展示她的研究成果，她将寻求通过作为纽约人文学科理事会人文学科计划的演讲者，并通过在当地和全国新闻界发表专栏文章，促进公众更好地了解科学和技术在跨大西洋关系中的作用。该项目的重点是科学和技术研究与计算，商业和外交关系的历史的交叉点。因此，它很好地研究了生产力思想和技术在大西洋两岸的流通模式，从二战前的个人努力到战后的政府调解计划。这样做将有助于更好地理解为什么尽管全球化不断加强，西方工业化国家之间的异质性仍然存在。它将通过整合第二次世界大战前后的几十年来为计算和技术的历史提供一个新的年表;而不是假设第二次世界大战是一个分水岭，这个项目追溯了战前到战后的政治，文化和技术的连续性和变化。该项目还将把大西洋两岸的政府官员、企业高管和工程师、劳工顾问和工会代表等各种行为者联系在一起。在此过程中，它将揭示一个复杂的公共和私人外交网络，并将为生产力技术的流通如何塑造大西洋两岸社会和工业关系的相互看法提供新的见解。

General Audience Summary This project investigates transatlantic transfers of US productivity technology and culture from the 1920s to the 1960s with a focus on their adaption in Germany. To better understand the role of US capitalism in transatlantic relations, it examines how productivity shaped the labor-management relations that characterize modern industrialized nations. The results of this research will eventually be published in a book that will provide an historical perspective to questions concerning economic competitiveness. It will promote a deeper understanding of the historical, cultural, and political roots of the liberal and social economic systems on either side of the Atlantic, and it will assess their relative strengths and weaknesses. The results will serve to shed light on current issues, such as how labor standards around the globe affect national competitiveness. The PI will present the results of her research at academic conferences, and she will seek to contribute to a better public understanding of the role of science and technology in transatlantic relations through public lectures as a Speaker in the Humanities program of the New York Council for the Humanities, and through the placement of op-ed articles in the local and national press. Technical Summary The focus of this project is located at the intersection of science and technology studies and the histories of computing, business and foreign relations. As such, it is well positioned to examine the modes of circulation of productivity ideas and technologies across the Atlantic, from the individual endeavors before WWII to the government-mediated programs after the war. Doing so will contribute to a better understanding of why, despite increasing globalization, heterogeneity persists among western industrialized countries. It will contribute to a new chronology of the histories of computing and technology by integrating the decades before and after WWII; instead of assuming that World War II was a watershed moment, this project traces political, cultural and technical continuities and changes from the prewar to the postwar period. The project will also link together a diversity of actors including government officers, corporate executives and engineers, labor advisors and trade union delegates on both sides of the Atlantic. In doing so, it will reveal a complex web of public and private diplomacy, and it will provide new insights into how the circulation of productivity technology shaped mutual perceptions of social and industrial relations on either side of the Atlantic.