The Automobile, Telephone, Radio and Electric Light and Power in the Rural United States

9321180 Kline关于技术对社会的影响的一个普遍观点是技术决定论：社会必须在新技术沿着出现时接受它们。 技术历史学家长期以来一直拒绝这种简单化的观点。 社会不仅接受或拒绝新技术，而且还可能从根本上改变它们所面临的技术，以便使它们适应自己的目的。 例如，农村人不仅像城市人一样使用福特T型车作为交通工具，而且还使其适应自己的文化。 他们把它改装成卡车，用来拉犁，甚至把后轮顶起来给洗衣机提供动力（在电动洗衣机变得容易使用之前）。 几种“现代”技术向乡村的转移使美国乡村生活在世纪发生了翻天覆地的变化。 克莱恩博士正在研究城市“现代化的代理人”和农村人民之间的相互作用，从1900年到1960年，四项主要技术转移到美国农场：汽车，电话，收音机，电灯和电力。 克莱恩博士特别感兴趣的是，农民们努力抵制、适应和构建他们自己版本的这些人工制品和系统，以满足农村生活方式，而不是被动地接受这些所谓的“现代化”力量的产品。 在这方面，该项目是技术史上新兴研究计划的一部分，该计划正在将该领域的传统重点从技术的“生产者”（如发明者，工程师和管理人员）转移到技术的消费者和用户。 然而，克莱恩博士在这个项目中通过调查生产者和消费者-“现代性的代理人”和农村人民-在这两种方法之间取得平衡，希望创造一个基础广泛的技术社会史，解决技术转让、现代性和性别问题。 ***

9321180 Kline A common view of the impact of technology on society is one of technological determinism: society must embrace new technologies as they come along. Historians of technology have long rejected this simplistic view. Societies not only accept or reject new technologies, but may also radically change the technologies that they are presented with in order to adapt them to their own purposes. Rural people, for example, not only used the Model T Ford as urbanites did for transportation but also adapted it to their own culture. They converted it to use as produce trucks, they used it to pull plows, and they even jacked up the rear wheel to power washing machines (before electric washing machines became readily available). The transfer of several "modern" technologies to the countryside enabled a sweeping transformation of American rural life in the 20th century. Dr. Kline is studying the interactions between urban "agents of modernity" and rural people in transferring a cluster of four major technologies to the American farm from about 1900 to 1960: the automobile, the telephone, the radio, and electric light and power. Of particular interest for Dr. Kline is the efforts of farm men and women to resist, adapt , and construct their own version of these artifacts and systems to meet rural ways of life, instead of passively accepting the products of these supposedly "modernizing" forces. In this respect, this project is part of an emerging research program in the history of technology that is shifting the field's traditional focus from the "producers" of technology, such as inventors, engineers, and managers, to the consumers and users of technology. Yet Dr. Kline is striking a balance in this project between these two approaches by investigating both producers and consumers--"agents of modernity" and rural people--in the hope of creating a broadly based social history of technology that addresses the themes of technology transfer, modernity and gender. ***