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After forty-five years
0160-79lx/91$3.00 + .oo Coptight 0 1991 Pexgamon PIWEplc
!L&chnoZogy in society, Vol. 13, pp. 317-326.1991 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
After Forty-Five Years Ogbum’s Predictions Concerning Aviation Re-examined1 Maurice N. Richter, Jr.
ABSTRACT In 1946 William Fielding Ogburn, a distinguished sociologist specializing in the study of technology and society, made careful and detailed predictions concerning the future development and future social impact of aviation. Forty-five years later we can see that his predictions were seriously flawed. He anticipated some major developments that did not occur, failed to anticipate others that did occur, and emphasized points that appear in 1991 to have heen of comparatively minor importance. An analysis of his failure may help us when we try to predict the future o!evelopment and impact of new technologies today.
As long ago as 1837-38, the poet Alfred ‘Ibnnyson foresaw with remarkable clarity the invention of the airplane and its commercial and military importance. Looking ahead, in his poem “Locksley Hall,” first published in 1841, he Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue. . .2 Much more recent predictions by people with much greater technical expertise have not always revealed similar insight into aviation’s potenMaurice N. Richter, Jr. is Associate Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at ALbany.Specialixing in the sociology of science, technology, and higher education, ke is the author of five books: Science As a Cultural Process (1972), Society: A Macroscopic View (1980), The Autonomy of Science 0981), !Bchnology and Social Complexity (19821, and Exploring Sociology (1987). He is editor of the American Sociological Association’s newsletter on the sociology of science, knowledge, and technology, and is writing a book on war as a social institution. 317
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tial. Only a few months before the Wright brothers’ first airplane flight in 1903, the distinguished astronomer Simon Newcomb suggested that perhaps nothing like that would ever happen: that we may “be ultimately forced to admit that aerial flight is one of that great class of problems with which man can never cope, and give up all attempts to grapple with it . n3 And six years later Popular Mechanics reported a prediction by Wilbur Wright himself, that planes could not be used for bombing because they would need to fly higher than one thousand feet “to escape shellfire,” and “at that height accuracy would be impossible.“4 By 1946, aviation was well established in the United States, although on a much smaller scale than today, with piston planes rather than jets, and with considerably less speed, safety, and reliability than we have become accustomed to. Aviation had been diverted mostly into military channels during the recent wartime emergency, but with the end of World War II its civilian applications were about to rebound and move ahead in exciting new directions. This was a good time for a book on The Social Eficts ofAviation to appear. And William Fielding Ogburn was as well qualified as anyone to write such a book. One of the leading sociologists of his time, he was an expert on the social effects of technological innovations. Well aware of many ways in which predictions can turn out to be faulty, he was commendably cautious in his own predictions. He was right in much of what he predicted, anticipating correctly, for example, that air travel would continue to become faster, cheaper, safer, and more frequent. Nevertheless, there are good reasons why The Social Effects of Aviation is today not considered to be Ogburn’s finest work. Some of his predictions turned out very badly indeed, which is exactly what he expected to happen. Let us see if we can understand what went wrong with his predictive efforts, and why The Flying Family Automobile Ogburn anticipated that “roadable airplanes,” which one could drive from home to airport and then fly off in and drive away in again after landing, would partially replace nonflying automobiles in mass private use, to be followed, very likely, by roadable helicopters. The birth rate would be slightly lowered because families would postpone having children to pay for their planes or helicopters;5 parents would commonly face disciplinary problems with their children who would want to use the family plane or helicopter,6 and suburban homes would require somewhat larger lots to accommodate helicopter landings7 - or, alternatively, people might land their helicopters at common landing fields and then drive them home like car@, where they could be stored in garages not much larger than cars require.
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Ogburn seemed to have good reasons for confidence in this vision of the future. Technological progress was clearly a fact of life in American society Obstacles to the development of other forms of technology had been overcome. There has also been a strong tendency in the United States for technologies to acquire mass private uses: a tendency that had already been manifested in guns, telephone, radio, camera, and automobile (and that has also manifested itself, since Ogburn wrote, in television, computers, home medical testing kits, etc.). Mass adoption of the bicycle in the United States in the late nineteenth century facilitated subsequent mass adoption of the automobile because cycling stimulated the paving of roads, installation of road signs and lights, enactment of modern traffic laws, establishment of roadside services, etc.9 The airplane seemed to Ogburn to be at about the same stage of development in 1945 as the automobile around 1905. The roadable airplane - or, as we might equally appropriately call it, the flying automobile - had already been produced in 1939, and Ogburn showed a photograph of it in flight.10 What could be more natural, then, than to envision the automobile as leading on to the roadable airplane and/or helicopter in mass private transportation, much as the bicycle had already led on to the automobile? But this did not happen. What went wrong? Several things: 1. Even if one succeeds in satisfying both driving-requirements and flying-requirements in the same vehicle, cheaply enough to make this vehicle economically viable, one has solved the problem of the roadable airplane for one point in time only. With each major advance in the design of either airplanes or automobiles, problems of compatibility between flying-requirements and driving-requirements would have reemerged, and the roadable airplane would have had to be repeatedly reinvented (not an easy feat, since flying and driving make very different demands on a vehicle). We might reasonably say that although the roadable airplane (or flying automobile) had been invented by 1939, within the framework of the definitions of “automobile” and “airplane” then prevailing, the roadable airplane in a practical form has not yet been invented today, within the framework of today’s definitions of the same terms, although some inventors are working on it.11 2. It is in the long-distance market that aviation competes most effectively with other modes of travel, yet only small aircraft could be roadable, and small aircraft are adapted primarily for relatively short trips. The potential market for roadable airplanes is reduced by this complication and by another as well: The roadable airplane inevitably involves compromises that make it less effective than an ordinary airplane for purposes of flying, and also less effective than an ordinary automobile for purposes of driving. 3. The absence of aircraft roadability, and the impracticality of carrying one’s own automobile as baggage aboard one’s own private plane,
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removes one of the major potential advantages of private flying and encourages greater emphasis on the nonflying automobile and on public transportation including (for long distances) commercial aviation. 4. Reliance on commercial aviation more than on private flying is also encouraged by problems of safety and congestion in the air. In predicting that aviation accident rates would decline Ogburn was lucky rather than prescient, because this decline - which of course has actually occurred - was supposed to take place at the same time that roadable airplanes were to begin to come into mass use. But accident rates could hardly have declined if many people had, at the same time, begun to fly around in private airborne automobiles. Ogburn admitted that a reduction in pilot skill might temporarily raise the accident rate, but he had confidence that radar and other technological improvements could cope with this problem. Given the air traffic congestion problems that we face in the 199Os, even without private flying on a truly mass basis, Ogburn’s failure to come to grips with this problem is striking. 5. An automobile rental system, with rental autos available at airports, provides a relatively attractive alternative to the roadable airplane without the latter’s complications. For reasons such as these we have, instead of what Ogburn predicted, a sharp distinction between automobiles and aircraft, with very strong reliance on the private automobile and on commercial aviation. We also have footprints on the moon. The Unpredicted
Space Age
Published only 11 years before the first artificial satellite was orbited, Ogburn’s book totally failed to predict space flight. This enormous omission makes some of Ogburn’s predictions seem quaint and feeble today (e.g., his discussion of the potential for aerial photography without any reference to photographs from space). In Ogburn’s “defense” on this point, one might claim that his book was about aviation only, and that space flight is a different topic. However, an argument of this sort can be used too easily to excuse failures to anticipate new technological developments. One could say, for example, that Furnasl2 was right in suggesting, in 1936, that “the ultimate attainable speed” for airplanes “might well approach 500 miles per hour.” The jets that routinely exceed this speed today were not included in Furnas’ 1936 conception of an “airplane” and therefore do not prove that his estimate of the speeds attainable by an “airplane” were unduly modest. But such an argument tends to become tautological: A given type of technology can never achieve X because whenever X is achieved we define the technology that achieved it as belonging to another type instead.
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Furthermore, Ogburn himself undermined any possibility of a defense of this sort by discussing rocketry, thus admitting it (and, by implication, space flight) to be within the scope of his book’s topic. He mentioned that the German V-2 rocket had already achieved a speed of 3000 miles per hour,13 but expressed doubt that rockets would ever be used for any purpose except %ar@ng explosives.“l* Already at the time when Ogburn’s book was being written there were people who could have told him something about the potentialities of the Space Age. But whenever we experience a failure in prediction, we are likely to be able to find, in retrospect, experts who could have helped us to avert that failure but who were not consulted, and whom there did not, at the time, seem to be any reason to consult. Figuring out, in advance, what kinds of experts one needs can be difficult, especially when radically new developments are approaching, and the credentials of those who predict radical innovations may not appear impressive; thus in the 1930s and early 1940s nuclear physicists were not generally recognized as “experts on explosives.”
Crime in the Skies Ogburn had a chapter on crime, in which he mentioned that aircraft (presumably empty ones) may be stolen,15 but never mentioned terrorist bombings of planes, or hijacking, even though he specifically reminded his readers that train passengers used to be robbed.16 Around 1946 one did not hear much about hijacking of airplanes, for an excellent reason: Airplanes in those days were simply incapable of responding very effectively to what hijackers (other than those suicidally inclined) would ordinarily want. Hijacking emerged as a major problem only after aircraft had become fast and reliable enough that a hijacker could demand to be flown to a distant spot and could have reasonable confidence that the aircraft would be able to get there quickly The relative slowness and unreliability of airc.raR prior to the jet age provided aviation with crucial antihijacking protection which further progress later stripped away.17 What Ogburn failed to predict here
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seeking entrepreneurship. 18 Aviation’s loss of invulnerability to crimes oi certain kinds may fit into this larger pattern.
Aviation and War Ogburn was reluctant to discuss the effect of aviation on future wars because there was considerable secrecy about revolutionary new develop. ments in this area.19 However, he also introduced a concept that should have enabled him to cope with this problem to some extent. He noted that predictions can often be reasonably made through projections oi past trends, even if one cannot predict the precise technical methods through which the predicted consequences will emerge.20 And, in any case, he did discuss military matters. His initial hesitation to do so turm out to have been warranted. In suggesting relocation of factories and even entire cities away from highly vulnerable coastal areas to inland locations in Tennessee, Iowa, Utah, and Colorado, where they would be safer from air attack,21 Ogburn was following the conventional wisdom of the time which, however, involved a fundamental error: proposing extremely expensive, slow, disruptive, and hard-to-reverse changes in society, in response to technological situations that are changing very rapidly and that are therefore likely to have rapidly changing implications for society. Ogburn also said that “the small nation is helpless against the air attack of a big power,” and that “the effect of the bomber is to make the big powers bigger and the little nations littler.“22 This misses several points of great importance for understanding the post-World-War-II military situation: that great powers are just as helpless against one another as little countries are against great powers; that “weak” nations may play one great power off against another and thus acquire considerable freedom of action; that “weak” nations may attack strong ones indirectly and secretly through terrorism; and that a “weak” nation may even attack a strong one directly and openly if confident that the strong nation will not dare to use its most potent weapons (e.g., the 1982 attack by Argentina on Britain via its invasion of the Falkland Islands, even though Britain had nuclear weapons and Argentina did not). The idea that a weak party may gain some freedom of action and bargaining power by playing one stronger party against another, by taking advantage of tensions between or among stronger parties, was understood by Thucydides 24 centuries ago. And a world in which the “strong” are as vulnerable as the “weak” would not have surprised anyone who lived along the American frontier in the 19th century in times and places in which every man normally carried a gun. Paradoxically, after hesitating to make predictions about military matters because he had no access to military secrets, Ogburn overcame this hesitation only to make mis-
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takes that appropriate attention to some long-familiar concepts related to his own discipline of sociology could have enabled him to avoid. Ogburn could also have gained some perspective on the military implications of new weaponry by considering a historical precedent from long ago. In the Bronze Age, when metals were scarce, their sources were relatively easy for central authorities to control. This situation encouraged the emergence and persistence of large empires, while the coming of the Iron Age meant that usable metals were more abundant and more widely distributed, which, in turn, facilitated the decline of large empires and the rise of localized political and military powers.23 Similarly, the Atomic Age brought considerable centralization of world power when nuclear weapons technology was new and the United States controlled it, whereas the diffusion of this technology since 1945 has involved a fragmentation of power. Ogburn was writing at a time when nuclear weapons were monopolized by the United States, which may have led him to gloss over the distinction between effects of certain military technology per se, and effects of its (temporary) monopolization.
A Question of Emphasis Writing at the dawn of the Television Age, Ogburn discussed the future impact of aviation on newspapers without mentioning the possibility that newspapers might be impacted by television also. This omission occurred despite the fact that television had already existed for several years. In Ogburn’s defense, one might make two points. First, there is no limit to the number and variety of developments that might affect the future of newspapers or of any other institution, and it would be too much to expect anyone to be able to understand in advance the way numerous diverse influences will combine to shape the future. Second, in a book entitled The Social Eficts of Aviation, the impact of television on newspapers cannot properly become a major focus of attention (even though we might reasonably say that it should be mentioned as a coexisting and complicating factor if the impact of aviation on newspapers is discussed). What Ogburn did, after discussing the future development of aviation, was to take a fairly large number of institutions, organizations, and activities that he found in American society as World War II ended, and predict the impact of aviation on each of these, one at a time. His inquiry would have grown to unmanageable proportions if he had also attempted to discuss everything else besides aviation that might have been expected to impact importantly on each of these diverse phenomena. But because he did not undertake this hopelessly large and complicated task, he was unable to predict the relative importance of aviation’s impacts compared to impacts from other sources.
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Given all the possible pitfalls, it would have been truly remarkable if Ogburn had successfully predicted all major impacts of aviation, and if all his predictions had come true. But even if Ogburn had achieved this stunning feat, we would still have been able to find, in a retrospective examination of his work, what appears to be a problem involving misplaced emphasis. This problem appears in two forms. One form is illustrated in the preceding discussion of newspapers. It involves misplaced emphasis on the way X (in this case, aviation) impacts on Y (the newspaper), as compared to the way Y is impacted by developments other than X (e.g, television). Misplaced emphasis of the second kind appears when certain impacts of X (aviation) are over-emphasized relative to X’s other impacts. In this connection, let us note that airplanes, according to Ogburn, may be used for shipping turkey eggs,24 inspecting windmills,2~ and transporting cowboys26 and Farm Credit Bureau officials.27 Ogburn was right. Airplanes can be used for all of these purposes. But not many of us, looking back today over the history of aviation in America, would think of mentioning any of these possible uses. On the other hand, we should be careful about how we interpret what seems to us to be a “misplaced emphasis” on certain effects of aviation rather than on other effects of it. Ordinarily we assume that we can see more clearly when we look back than when we look ahead (e.g., that we know more in 1991 about the development and impact of aviation between 1947 and 1990 than Ogburn could have known about it in 1946). But there are certain situations in which this assumption is questionable, and we may have such a situation here. If Ogburn could speak to us today he would of course admit that he had been wrong on many points, but he might also reasonably claim that in certain respects he understood in 1946 how aviation was going to change the world he knew, better than we can now understand how aviation has already changed a world that we can remember only dimly if at all. And what seems to us today to be a “misplaced emphasis” on turkey eggs, windmills, cowboys, Farm Credit Bureau officials, etc., might perhaps have had a rationale that limitations of our own backward-looking perspective make it difi% cult or impossible for us to grasp.
Conclusion The predictions focused on here were made not by a novelist or poet, or by an expert in relevant technologies, but rather by a distinguished sociologist who specialized in the study of technology in relation to social change. They were made long enough ago that we can assess their accuracy and examine them with fairly deep historical perspective. They were presented in considerable detail, and with commendable precision; Ogburn, to his credit, did not try to make predictions so vague or ambigu-
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ous that he could later claim to have been “right” no matter how things turned out. His predictions, furthermore, were offered along with a careful discussion of the author’s assumptions about the methodology of prediction, and with careful explanation of the reasoning that led him to the conclusions reached. This combination of features gives Ogburn’s work on aviation a special quality that makes a reexamination of it particularly relevant to any attempt to predict the fiture development and impact of particular technologies today.
Notes 1. I am grateful to Rudi Volti for helpful suggestions. A greatly abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting, Society for Social Studies of Science, Minneapolis, October 20,199O. 2. A. Tennyson, Poems curd Plays (London: Oxford University Press, 19651, p. 91. 3. S. Newcomb, ‘The Outlook for the FIying Machine,” !fhc Zn&pen&ti, Vol. 55 (October 22,1903). 4. PopuZur Ildechunics, Vol. 12 (July 1909) p. 15. 5. W.F. Ogbum, The Social Eficts ofAviution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 19461, p. 313. 6. Op. cit., p. 335. 7. Op. cit., p. 336. 8. op. cit., p. 343. 9. S. Aronson, “The Sociology of the Bicycle,” Social Forces, Vol. 30 (March 1952) pp. 305-317. 10. ogburn, Op. cit., p. 26. 11. See L.M. Fisher, “How Practical Is the Sky Plane?“, The New York ZImes, Vol. 140, no. 48,486 (January 20,1991) p. F-9. 12. C.C. Fumas, The Next Hundred Years (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1936). p. 266. 13. o&urn, op. cit., p. 92. 14. op. cit.. p. 93. 15. @a. cit., p. 432. 16. Op. cit., p. 424. 17. M.N. Richter, Jr., !lkchnoZogyand Sociul Complexity (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 19821, p. 2. 18. M.N. Richter, Jr., “University Scientists As Entrepreneurs,” in David Breneman and Ted I. K Youn teds.), Academic Labor Markets and Careers (New York: FaImer#m.ss, 19881, pp. 165-173. 19. ogburn, op. cit., p. 4. 20. op. cit., p. 84. 21. op. cit., p. 359. 22. Op. cit.. p. 698. 23. W.H. McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (New York: Mentor, 19651, p. 139. 24. Q&urn, Op. cit., p. 605. 25. op. cit., p. 637. 26. op. cit., p. 636. 27. qo. cit., p. 666.
!L&chnoZogy in society, Vol. 13, pp. 317-326.1991 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
After Forty-Five Years Ogbum’s Predictions Concerning Aviation Re-examined1 Maurice N. Richter, Jr.
ABSTRACT In 1946 William Fielding Ogburn, a distinguished sociologist specializing in the study of technology and society, made careful and detailed predictions concerning the future development and future social impact of aviation. Forty-five years later we can see that his predictions were seriously flawed. He anticipated some major developments that did not occur, failed to anticipate others that did occur, and emphasized points that appear in 1991 to have heen of comparatively minor importance. An analysis of his failure may help us when we try to predict the future o!evelopment and impact of new technologies today.
As long ago as 1837-38, the poet Alfred ‘Ibnnyson foresaw with remarkable clarity the invention of the airplane and its commercial and military importance. Looking ahead, in his poem “Locksley Hall,” first published in 1841, he Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue. . .2 Much more recent predictions by people with much greater technical expertise have not always revealed similar insight into aviation’s potenMaurice N. Richter, Jr. is Associate Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at ALbany.Specialixing in the sociology of science, technology, and higher education, ke is the author of five books: Science As a Cultural Process (1972), Society: A Macroscopic View (1980), The Autonomy of Science 0981), !Bchnology and Social Complexity (19821, and Exploring Sociology (1987). He is editor of the American Sociological Association’s newsletter on the sociology of science, knowledge, and technology, and is writing a book on war as a social institution. 317
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tial. Only a few months before the Wright brothers’ first airplane flight in 1903, the distinguished astronomer Simon Newcomb suggested that perhaps nothing like that would ever happen: that we may “be ultimately forced to admit that aerial flight is one of that great class of problems with which man can never cope, and give up all attempts to grapple with it . n3 And six years later Popular Mechanics reported a prediction by Wilbur Wright himself, that planes could not be used for bombing because they would need to fly higher than one thousand feet “to escape shellfire,” and “at that height accuracy would be impossible.“4 By 1946, aviation was well established in the United States, although on a much smaller scale than today, with piston planes rather than jets, and with considerably less speed, safety, and reliability than we have become accustomed to. Aviation had been diverted mostly into military channels during the recent wartime emergency, but with the end of World War II its civilian applications were about to rebound and move ahead in exciting new directions. This was a good time for a book on The Social Eficts ofAviation to appear. And William Fielding Ogburn was as well qualified as anyone to write such a book. One of the leading sociologists of his time, he was an expert on the social effects of technological innovations. Well aware of many ways in which predictions can turn out to be faulty, he was commendably cautious in his own predictions. He was right in much of what he predicted, anticipating correctly, for example, that air travel would continue to become faster, cheaper, safer, and more frequent. Nevertheless, there are good reasons why The Social Effects of Aviation is today not considered to be Ogburn’s finest work. Some of his predictions turned out very badly indeed, which is exactly what he expected to happen. Let us see if we can understand what went wrong with his predictive efforts, and why The Flying Family Automobile Ogburn anticipated that “roadable airplanes,” which one could drive from home to airport and then fly off in and drive away in again after landing, would partially replace nonflying automobiles in mass private use, to be followed, very likely, by roadable helicopters. The birth rate would be slightly lowered because families would postpone having children to pay for their planes or helicopters;5 parents would commonly face disciplinary problems with their children who would want to use the family plane or helicopter,6 and suburban homes would require somewhat larger lots to accommodate helicopter landings7 - or, alternatively, people might land their helicopters at common landing fields and then drive them home like car@, where they could be stored in garages not much larger than cars require.
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Ogburn seemed to have good reasons for confidence in this vision of the future. Technological progress was clearly a fact of life in American society Obstacles to the development of other forms of technology had been overcome. There has also been a strong tendency in the United States for technologies to acquire mass private uses: a tendency that had already been manifested in guns, telephone, radio, camera, and automobile (and that has also manifested itself, since Ogburn wrote, in television, computers, home medical testing kits, etc.). Mass adoption of the bicycle in the United States in the late nineteenth century facilitated subsequent mass adoption of the automobile because cycling stimulated the paving of roads, installation of road signs and lights, enactment of modern traffic laws, establishment of roadside services, etc.9 The airplane seemed to Ogburn to be at about the same stage of development in 1945 as the automobile around 1905. The roadable airplane - or, as we might equally appropriately call it, the flying automobile - had already been produced in 1939, and Ogburn showed a photograph of it in flight.10 What could be more natural, then, than to envision the automobile as leading on to the roadable airplane and/or helicopter in mass private transportation, much as the bicycle had already led on to the automobile? But this did not happen. What went wrong? Several things: 1. Even if one succeeds in satisfying both driving-requirements and flying-requirements in the same vehicle, cheaply enough to make this vehicle economically viable, one has solved the problem of the roadable airplane for one point in time only. With each major advance in the design of either airplanes or automobiles, problems of compatibility between flying-requirements and driving-requirements would have reemerged, and the roadable airplane would have had to be repeatedly reinvented (not an easy feat, since flying and driving make very different demands on a vehicle). We might reasonably say that although the roadable airplane (or flying automobile) had been invented by 1939, within the framework of the definitions of “automobile” and “airplane” then prevailing, the roadable airplane in a practical form has not yet been invented today, within the framework of today’s definitions of the same terms, although some inventors are working on it.11 2. It is in the long-distance market that aviation competes most effectively with other modes of travel, yet only small aircraft could be roadable, and small aircraft are adapted primarily for relatively short trips. The potential market for roadable airplanes is reduced by this complication and by another as well: The roadable airplane inevitably involves compromises that make it less effective than an ordinary airplane for purposes of flying, and also less effective than an ordinary automobile for purposes of driving. 3. The absence of aircraft roadability, and the impracticality of carrying one’s own automobile as baggage aboard one’s own private plane,
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removes one of the major potential advantages of private flying and encourages greater emphasis on the nonflying automobile and on public transportation including (for long distances) commercial aviation. 4. Reliance on commercial aviation more than on private flying is also encouraged by problems of safety and congestion in the air. In predicting that aviation accident rates would decline Ogburn was lucky rather than prescient, because this decline - which of course has actually occurred - was supposed to take place at the same time that roadable airplanes were to begin to come into mass use. But accident rates could hardly have declined if many people had, at the same time, begun to fly around in private airborne automobiles. Ogburn admitted that a reduction in pilot skill might temporarily raise the accident rate, but he had confidence that radar and other technological improvements could cope with this problem. Given the air traffic congestion problems that we face in the 199Os, even without private flying on a truly mass basis, Ogburn’s failure to come to grips with this problem is striking. 5. An automobile rental system, with rental autos available at airports, provides a relatively attractive alternative to the roadable airplane without the latter’s complications. For reasons such as these we have, instead of what Ogburn predicted, a sharp distinction between automobiles and aircraft, with very strong reliance on the private automobile and on commercial aviation. We also have footprints on the moon. The Unpredicted
Space Age
Published only 11 years before the first artificial satellite was orbited, Ogburn’s book totally failed to predict space flight. This enormous omission makes some of Ogburn’s predictions seem quaint and feeble today (e.g., his discussion of the potential for aerial photography without any reference to photographs from space). In Ogburn’s “defense” on this point, one might claim that his book was about aviation only, and that space flight is a different topic. However, an argument of this sort can be used too easily to excuse failures to anticipate new technological developments. One could say, for example, that Furnasl2 was right in suggesting, in 1936, that “the ultimate attainable speed” for airplanes “might well approach 500 miles per hour.” The jets that routinely exceed this speed today were not included in Furnas’ 1936 conception of an “airplane” and therefore do not prove that his estimate of the speeds attainable by an “airplane” were unduly modest. But such an argument tends to become tautological: A given type of technology can never achieve X because whenever X is achieved we define the technology that achieved it as belonging to another type instead.
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Furthermore, Ogburn himself undermined any possibility of a defense of this sort by discussing rocketry, thus admitting it (and, by implication, space flight) to be within the scope of his book’s topic. He mentioned that the German V-2 rocket had already achieved a speed of 3000 miles per hour,13 but expressed doubt that rockets would ever be used for any purpose except %ar@ng explosives.“l* Already at the time when Ogburn’s book was being written there were people who could have told him something about the potentialities of the Space Age. But whenever we experience a failure in prediction, we are likely to be able to find, in retrospect, experts who could have helped us to avert that failure but who were not consulted, and whom there did not, at the time, seem to be any reason to consult. Figuring out, in advance, what kinds of experts one needs can be difficult, especially when radically new developments are approaching, and the credentials of those who predict radical innovations may not appear impressive; thus in the 1930s and early 1940s nuclear physicists were not generally recognized as “experts on explosives.”
Crime in the Skies Ogburn had a chapter on crime, in which he mentioned that aircraft (presumably empty ones) may be stolen,15 but never mentioned terrorist bombings of planes, or hijacking, even though he specifically reminded his readers that train passengers used to be robbed.16 Around 1946 one did not hear much about hijacking of airplanes, for an excellent reason: Airplanes in those days were simply incapable of responding very effectively to what hijackers (other than those suicidally inclined) would ordinarily want. Hijacking emerged as a major problem only after aircraft had become fast and reliable enough that a hijacker could demand to be flown to a distant spot and could have reasonable confidence that the aircraft would be able to get there quickly The relative slowness and unreliability of airc.raR prior to the jet age provided aviation with crucial antihijacking protection which further progress later stripped away.17 What Ogburn failed to predict here
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seeking entrepreneurship. 18 Aviation’s loss of invulnerability to crimes oi certain kinds may fit into this larger pattern.
Aviation and War Ogburn was reluctant to discuss the effect of aviation on future wars because there was considerable secrecy about revolutionary new develop. ments in this area.19 However, he also introduced a concept that should have enabled him to cope with this problem to some extent. He noted that predictions can often be reasonably made through projections oi past trends, even if one cannot predict the precise technical methods through which the predicted consequences will emerge.20 And, in any case, he did discuss military matters. His initial hesitation to do so turm out to have been warranted. In suggesting relocation of factories and even entire cities away from highly vulnerable coastal areas to inland locations in Tennessee, Iowa, Utah, and Colorado, where they would be safer from air attack,21 Ogburn was following the conventional wisdom of the time which, however, involved a fundamental error: proposing extremely expensive, slow, disruptive, and hard-to-reverse changes in society, in response to technological situations that are changing very rapidly and that are therefore likely to have rapidly changing implications for society. Ogburn also said that “the small nation is helpless against the air attack of a big power,” and that “the effect of the bomber is to make the big powers bigger and the little nations littler.“22 This misses several points of great importance for understanding the post-World-War-II military situation: that great powers are just as helpless against one another as little countries are against great powers; that “weak” nations may play one great power off against another and thus acquire considerable freedom of action; that “weak” nations may attack strong ones indirectly and secretly through terrorism; and that a “weak” nation may even attack a strong one directly and openly if confident that the strong nation will not dare to use its most potent weapons (e.g., the 1982 attack by Argentina on Britain via its invasion of the Falkland Islands, even though Britain had nuclear weapons and Argentina did not). The idea that a weak party may gain some freedom of action and bargaining power by playing one stronger party against another, by taking advantage of tensions between or among stronger parties, was understood by Thucydides 24 centuries ago. And a world in which the “strong” are as vulnerable as the “weak” would not have surprised anyone who lived along the American frontier in the 19th century in times and places in which every man normally carried a gun. Paradoxically, after hesitating to make predictions about military matters because he had no access to military secrets, Ogburn overcame this hesitation only to make mis-
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takes that appropriate attention to some long-familiar concepts related to his own discipline of sociology could have enabled him to avoid. Ogburn could also have gained some perspective on the military implications of new weaponry by considering a historical precedent from long ago. In the Bronze Age, when metals were scarce, their sources were relatively easy for central authorities to control. This situation encouraged the emergence and persistence of large empires, while the coming of the Iron Age meant that usable metals were more abundant and more widely distributed, which, in turn, facilitated the decline of large empires and the rise of localized political and military powers.23 Similarly, the Atomic Age brought considerable centralization of world power when nuclear weapons technology was new and the United States controlled it, whereas the diffusion of this technology since 1945 has involved a fragmentation of power. Ogburn was writing at a time when nuclear weapons were monopolized by the United States, which may have led him to gloss over the distinction between effects of certain military technology per se, and effects of its (temporary) monopolization.
A Question of Emphasis Writing at the dawn of the Television Age, Ogburn discussed the future impact of aviation on newspapers without mentioning the possibility that newspapers might be impacted by television also. This omission occurred despite the fact that television had already existed for several years. In Ogburn’s defense, one might make two points. First, there is no limit to the number and variety of developments that might affect the future of newspapers or of any other institution, and it would be too much to expect anyone to be able to understand in advance the way numerous diverse influences will combine to shape the future. Second, in a book entitled The Social Eficts of Aviation, the impact of television on newspapers cannot properly become a major focus of attention (even though we might reasonably say that it should be mentioned as a coexisting and complicating factor if the impact of aviation on newspapers is discussed). What Ogburn did, after discussing the future development of aviation, was to take a fairly large number of institutions, organizations, and activities that he found in American society as World War II ended, and predict the impact of aviation on each of these, one at a time. His inquiry would have grown to unmanageable proportions if he had also attempted to discuss everything else besides aviation that might have been expected to impact importantly on each of these diverse phenomena. But because he did not undertake this hopelessly large and complicated task, he was unable to predict the relative importance of aviation’s impacts compared to impacts from other sources.
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Given all the possible pitfalls, it would have been truly remarkable if Ogburn had successfully predicted all major impacts of aviation, and if all his predictions had come true. But even if Ogburn had achieved this stunning feat, we would still have been able to find, in a retrospective examination of his work, what appears to be a problem involving misplaced emphasis. This problem appears in two forms. One form is illustrated in the preceding discussion of newspapers. It involves misplaced emphasis on the way X (in this case, aviation) impacts on Y (the newspaper), as compared to the way Y is impacted by developments other than X (e.g, television). Misplaced emphasis of the second kind appears when certain impacts of X (aviation) are over-emphasized relative to X’s other impacts. In this connection, let us note that airplanes, according to Ogburn, may be used for shipping turkey eggs,24 inspecting windmills,2~ and transporting cowboys26 and Farm Credit Bureau officials.27 Ogburn was right. Airplanes can be used for all of these purposes. But not many of us, looking back today over the history of aviation in America, would think of mentioning any of these possible uses. On the other hand, we should be careful about how we interpret what seems to us to be a “misplaced emphasis” on certain effects of aviation rather than on other effects of it. Ordinarily we assume that we can see more clearly when we look back than when we look ahead (e.g., that we know more in 1991 about the development and impact of aviation between 1947 and 1990 than Ogburn could have known about it in 1946). But there are certain situations in which this assumption is questionable, and we may have such a situation here. If Ogburn could speak to us today he would of course admit that he had been wrong on many points, but he might also reasonably claim that in certain respects he understood in 1946 how aviation was going to change the world he knew, better than we can now understand how aviation has already changed a world that we can remember only dimly if at all. And what seems to us today to be a “misplaced emphasis” on turkey eggs, windmills, cowboys, Farm Credit Bureau officials, etc., might perhaps have had a rationale that limitations of our own backward-looking perspective make it difi% cult or impossible for us to grasp.
Conclusion The predictions focused on here were made not by a novelist or poet, or by an expert in relevant technologies, but rather by a distinguished sociologist who specialized in the study of technology in relation to social change. They were made long enough ago that we can assess their accuracy and examine them with fairly deep historical perspective. They were presented in considerable detail, and with commendable precision; Ogburn, to his credit, did not try to make predictions so vague or ambigu-
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ous that he could later claim to have been “right” no matter how things turned out. His predictions, furthermore, were offered along with a careful discussion of the author’s assumptions about the methodology of prediction, and with careful explanation of the reasoning that led him to the conclusions reached. This combination of features gives Ogburn’s work on aviation a special quality that makes a reexamination of it particularly relevant to any attempt to predict the fiture development and impact of particular technologies today.
Notes 1. I am grateful to Rudi Volti for helpful suggestions. A greatly abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting, Society for Social Studies of Science, Minneapolis, October 20,199O. 2. A. Tennyson, Poems curd Plays (London: Oxford University Press, 19651, p. 91. 3. S. Newcomb, ‘The Outlook for the FIying Machine,” !fhc Zn&pen&ti, Vol. 55 (October 22,1903). 4. PopuZur Ildechunics, Vol. 12 (July 1909) p. 15. 5. W.F. Ogbum, The Social Eficts ofAviution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 19461, p. 313. 6. Op. cit., p. 335. 7. Op. cit., p. 336. 8. op. cit., p. 343. 9. S. Aronson, “The Sociology of the Bicycle,” Social Forces, Vol. 30 (March 1952) pp. 305-317. 10. ogburn, Op. cit., p. 26. 11. See L.M. Fisher, “How Practical Is the Sky Plane?“, The New York ZImes, Vol. 140, no. 48,486 (January 20,1991) p. F-9. 12. C.C. Fumas, The Next Hundred Years (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1936). p. 266. 13. o&urn, op. cit., p. 92. 14. op. cit.. p. 93. 15. @a. cit., p. 432. 16. Op. cit., p. 424. 17. M.N. Richter, Jr., !lkchnoZogyand Sociul Complexity (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 19821, p. 2. 18. M.N. Richter, Jr., “University Scientists As Entrepreneurs,” in David Breneman and Ted I. K Youn teds.), Academic Labor Markets and Careers (New York: FaImer#m.ss, 19881, pp. 165-173. 19. ogburn, op. cit., p. 4. 20. op. cit., p. 84. 21. op. cit., p. 359. 22. Op. cit.. p. 698. 23. W.H. McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (New York: Mentor, 19651, p. 139. 24. Q&urn, Op. cit., p. 605. 25. op. cit., p. 637. 26. op. cit., p. 636. 27. qo. cit., p. 666.