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

这个项目调查了从20世纪20年代到60年代的美国生产力、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，它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发表在一本书中，这本书将为有关经济竞争力的问题提供历史视角。它将促进对大西洋两岸自由和社会经济制度的历史、文化和政治根源的更深入了解，并将评估它们的相对优势和劣势。这一结果将有助于揭示当前的问题，例如全球各地的劳工标准如何影响国家竞争力。她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委员会人文项目发言人的公开讲座，以及通过在当地和全国媒体上发表评论文章，来更好地促进公众对科学和技术在跨大西洋关系中的作用的理解。技术概述这个项目的重点是科学和技术研究与计算机、商业和外交关系史的交集。因此，它处于有利地位，可以研究大西洋两岸生产力思想和技术的流通模式，从二战前的个人努力到战后政府调解的计划。这样做将有助于更好地理解为什么尽管全球化日益加剧，但西方工业化国家之间的异质性仍然存在。它将通过整合二战前后的几十年，为计算和技术史的新年表做出贡献；这个项目没有假设第二次世界大战是一个分水岭时刻，而是追溯了从战前到战后的政治、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不同的参与者联系在一起。通过这样做，它将揭示一个由公共和私人外交组成的复杂网络，并将提供新的见解，让人们了解生产力技术的流通如何塑造大西洋两岸对社会和劳资关系的共同看法。

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.