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

Rochester Institute Of Tech, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

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.