Conceptualizing Technology in Literary Terms: Some American Examples

Abstract

How a writer conceptualizes technology, perhaps even more than how he thinks of his own pursuits, will determine whether he perceives or denies affinities between technology and literature. To some degree, such conceptions are functions of larger national concerns and social attitudes. For the framers of the Constitution of the United States, writers and inventors enjoyed certain privileges not accorded to other citizens. Theirs are the only two professions singled out by that document as entitled to special protection. Because books and inventions contribute to the public good, their creators are entitled to profit through copyright and patent; Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 8 gives Congress the power “To promote the progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”, Their common property rights notwithstanding, American writers traditionally have not only declined to affirm the relationship, but have also viewed their colleagues with suspicion. The explanation is largely historical; for many years technology held no fixed place in American cultural hierarchies. That uncertainty, in turn, grew out of even more basic confusion about what, exactly, technology was. While the definition of imaginative literature as a symbol-making activity has remained reasonably constant over the last hundred years, conceptions of technology have been revised (beginning at least with Ernst Kapp’s Outlines of a Philosophy of Technology in 1877) to include activities and innovations beyond simple tool-making. Since poets and novelists and literary critics seldom read scholarly treatments of technology, they have tended to rely on popular notions, which rarely agree with professional assessments.