Locating significance: Locating significance: technology as a tool for the history of everyday life

Abstract

I would say that it helps to think of any technology as a network of objects, activities, knowledge and meaning. The network thus comprises: goals to be met; tasks to be done; artefacts made for these purposes; the uses (material, social or symbolic) to which the artefacts are put; the material processes by which they are produced and made available; and the skills, knowledge and organization mobilized in these processes. I would suggest that we may assume that a technology was significant within a society if one or more elements in this network are highly visible in the historical record, whether as: material remains; explicit subjects of description or debate; or taken-for-granted components of key activities (often requiring a reading ‘between the lines’ or ‘against the grain’). As an illustration of this apparently counter-intuitive last point, modern Californians are most likely to recognize how important their toilet habits are to their identity only when they encounter unfamiliar bathroom arrangements on a trip abroad.