Preliminary Programme

Not only users matter. In order to understand the shaping of a technology, in fact, it’s necessary to look at other relevant social groups that interact in the co-construction of artefacts. A good example is provided by the early Italian telephone service, where it’s necessary to consider at least 4 groups: politicians, private companies, electrical engineer and subscribers.

Politicians were probably the most responsible in the telephone backward of the country. They always had a “natural hesitation” between state monopoly and private concessions, that was not completely solved until 1920s. They misunderstood the social meaning of the new medium: not considering the telephone as a “public service”, the Italian government during 1890s didn’t fund the long distance network, like all other European countries. They misunderstood economic principles of telecommunications too: for example, in the first 10 years, the grants was assigned to private companies only for 3 years. Finally, they decided to avoid investments in the telephone service because it could have competed with the electrical telegraph.

Until the end of the 1880s, telephone private companies invested in the system and so, during this period, the telephone in Italy was diffused with percentage similar to other countries like Germany and France. After the failed nationalization of 1890, companies put less and less money in the telephone system and they were openly challenged by politicians and public opinion at the beginning of the 1900s: in particular a political court of enquiry made known in 1905 the frauds and misuses committed against the state and the subscribers.

Also electrical engineers tried to impose their technical and rational view of the system and especially of the telephone network. They failed because private companies could not supply a comprehensive project of it. First of all because concessions had only an urban extension, secondly because they had to manage their business with a short term perspective because of the legislation: this caused a chaotic growth of the net, with local and temporary solutions. Engineers at the beginning were the top managers and sometimes investors in the early telephone companies, they exercised also a role of control over the quality of the system and, in general, they influenced the debate on telephony trough technical journals.

Surprisingly the telephone demand in Italy was really high also in the first decades. We may even say that the demand push could be considered one of the most important aspect of the early Italian telephony. Subscribers also mattered, together with economical and political interests, in promoting the incomplete nationalization of the system realized in 1907 and in determining its failure too: the state in fact could not fulfil all the requested connections. Finally users, either in accordance or in conflict with private companies, had a lead role in co-constructing way of uses of the new medium.

Only considering all these aspects and, especially, how they interact and were mediated by different groups it’s possible to understand how the new medium was understood and metabolized by the contemporary society. (Show less)

This paper argues that using three components, the cultural, the organisational and the technical, developments in design, technology and society can be better understood. The first, the cultural, is reflected in common goals, values, and ethical codes and an awareness of creativity as cultural activity.
The organisational component relates to the degree of purposive activity or volition that instigates production and consumption. This will include economic and industrial activity, professional activity and the modes of distribution and consumption. The technical aspects include knowledge, skill and techniques, the application of tools, machines, and of course, the products consumed.
Using the case study of the “Austrian” bentwood furniture industry in the period 1830-1880, this paper will consider the structure of the industry, the impact of social groups, developments in the business and the artefacts they produced, and the progress in technologies and patented applications all of which demonstrate the interactions of social, economic and design/technology factors.
By using a combination of theoretical approaches (including SCOT, ANT and TTP) and drawing on the work of for example, Latour, Bijker, Dosi, the connections between technological innovation, (e.g. Utterback’s three phases of innovation), business growth, product development and consumption will be explored and analysed.
The case study will draw out the social contexts of the technology to demonstrate how bentwood furniture design, manufacturing, distribution and consuming are aspects of a classic network. (Show less)

In the closing decades of the 19 Century, mechanical refrigeration methods
spread rapidly and affected models of consumption and quality of food all
over the western world. The preservation of perishable foods, particularly
meat, fish and vegetables, improved significantly, and wider sections of
the urban population were able to vary their diet. On the eve of World War
One, small domestic ice boxes became common in the USA and the UK, and food
shopping patterns altered.
But the new technology spread to the rest of Europe only during the war. In
these years, public slaughterhouses were equipped with ice-making machines
and refrigerators to store meat. In addition, slaughterhouses often
retailed ice, which became an important source of income.
Food systems thus changed all over the western world, although at different
rates.
This paper reports on this technological modernisation and the shifts in
patterns of consumption. The process was closely linked to increasing
urbanisation, the level of economic development and in the last analysis,
per capita income. It is however certain that other factors such as public
demand, advertising and consumer taste were also influential. (Show less)

The improvement of public transport in modern Britain had a significant impact on the growth of personal mobility from the last decades of the 19th century. Britain's railways were among the significant players in the field, but their development did not follow a smooth contour, especially from the 1870s when inter-company competition made it necessary for them to adopt a low-margin, high-volume business model, while concurrently quality of service became increasingly important. Superiority in speed was an obvious form of better service, but the railways also needed to attend to the issue of comfort, particularly those which were at a natural disadvantage in terms of journey time over longer distances. Well into the 20th century, Britain's railways therefore developed a range of technologies designed to deliver civilized velocity – "comfort with speed" – in a form intended to maximize both commercial returns and company prestige.
In this paper, we discuss three important periods in the development of just one aspect of the railways’ technological ensemble, the passenger carriage, focusing on the relationship between the process of technological innovation and the consumers’ experience. By concentrating on the mass market for mobility, we shed light both on the importance of technology for the modern consumer market and, at the same time, address the significant role the railways played in the creation of commercial culture both in the business and consumer world.
The first period is the 1870s-1880s, when the Midland Railway drastically changed the passenger experience by abolishing second-class and upgrading third-class carriages to superior standard by using better equipment such as cushioned seats, separate compartments, and foot warmers. Although some companies were highly resistant to this democratization of passenger comfort, inter-company competition soon forced more radical changes.
This paradigm of civilized velocity was sufficient to meet the incipient competition from road transport over longer distances until at least WWI. But in the interwar period – our second focus – the technology of road transport improved rapidly, leading the railway companies to a renewed emphasis on their advantages in comfort in contrast to "fatiguing" motor travel. Vigorous marketing sold modern comfort to both the social and business elite and the emerging mass tourist market. But although the comparison with the home remained a popular marketing trope, new carriage designs such as the open interior started to alter the passenger experience.
Faced in the 1960s with the twin threats of mass motoring and domestic aviation, the now-nationalized railway redoubled its efforts to deliver civilized velocity. The decade from 1965 witnessed the emergence of ‘Inter-City’, a package of technological, operational and marketing innovations designed to grow a mass inter-urban market by offering a faster and more comfortable journey than by car, and a more convenient and more comfortable one than by plane. The High Speed Train, introduced in 1976, applied the ergonomic and aesthetic lessons of industrial design to produce a passenger environment which, while radically different from the “home from home” promoted earlier in the century, has for over 30 years proved commercially highly successful. (Show less)