Dissertation Research: Automatic Control: Development and Transfer

本论文通过考察1920-1965年期间美国和日本之间电子自动控制技术的发展和转移，研究技术与文化之间的关系。 尽管日本企业在20世纪20年代从美国进口了大量的控制技术，但日本和美国的工程师使用这些技术的材料、管理和科学环境却大不相同。 不同的条件产生了适合这些社会技术能力的不同技术。 此外，每个国家的工业家、官僚和学者都创造了适合其特定社会、文化和政治状况的控制的独特解释。 这项研究将使用控制技术作为理解在社会之间移动技术所需的物质和社会文化变革的工具。 核心假设是，为了使进口技术有用，接受国必须对其进行重组和调整，以适应其特殊需要。 然而，与此同时，接受者必须根据技术在其社会中的新作用重新评估技术，创造一套新的含义，界定技术应用的条件。 这样做，用户就改变了他们与自己、与彼此以及与技术本身的关系。

This dissertation project investigates the relationship between technology and culture by examining the development and transfer of electronic automatic control technology between the United States and Japan in the period of 1920-1965. Although Japanese business imported large quantities of control technology from America during the 1920's, the material, managerial, and scientific circumstances under which engineers used these technologies differed substantially between Japan and the United States. Different conditions produced different technologies appropriate to these societies' technological capabilities. In addition, in each country industrialists, bureaucrats, and academics created distinctive interpretations of control suitable to their particular social, cultural, and political situations. This study will use control technology as a vehicle for understanding the material and sociocultural transformations necessary to move technologies between societies. The central hypothesis is that for imported technology to be useful, its recipients must reorganize and adapt it to suit their particular needs. At the same time, however, the recipients must reevaluate the technology in light of its new role in their society, creating a new set of meanings that define the terms under which the technology will be applied. In so doing, the users transform their relationships to themselves, to each other, and to the technology itself.