IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2021 - 13

Book Reviews

Techno-Fixers: Origins and Implications
of Technological Faith
By Sean F. Johnston, Montreal, QC, Canada:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020, 324 pp.
Reviewed by A. David Wunsch, Electrical and
Computer Engineering Department, University of
Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA 01854 USA
 Those who have recently published a book
looking at the intersection of science, technology,
and society must wish that they could have delayed
its appearance. As I write this in the summer of 2020,
the world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic
and is looking for a medical fix, a life-saving vaccine.
The public's faith in science and technology has
never been higher. Computer " apps " that explore
things such as the frequency of, and point of origin
of, COVID-related Google search terms, and Twitter
posts, are being used to trace the progress of the
virus and to predict the sites of further outbreaks.
The United States has been roiled by the death, at
the hands of the police, of George Floyd. Floyd's killing was captured by an app that has been circulating throughout the globe that has acquired the near
iconic power of the crucifixion. With the majority
of the American people equipped to make audio-
visual recording of police brutality and post them on
social media, we expect that crimes such as this will
certainly diminish.
A tempting synecdoche for Prof. Johnston's book
about technological fixes is a story he tells about
Alvin Weinberg. In August 1965, there were six days
of riots in Watts, a Black section of Los Angeles. Triggered by police brutality, the upheaval caused major
losses of lives and properties. Weinberg, a major figure in the field of science and public policy, was the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2021.3056278
Date of current version: 16 March 2021.

March 2021

Director of Research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the largest laboratory within the U.S. Department of Energy. He sent a letter to Donald Hornig,
a chemist and special assistant to President Lyndon
Johnson for science and technology. Observing that
riots usually occurred in hot weather, Weinberg proposed an " engineering fix " that would provide air
conditioners to slum dwellers. That air conditioners
might solve problems created by centuries of racial
discrimination, of which the riots are just one manifestation, strikes one as ludicrous, which is not to
say that an air conditioner might be unwelcome in
a poor person's apartment, especially if they did
not have to pay the electric bill. Weinberg is one of
three public figures Johnston sketches-all of them
believers in the efficacy of technological fixes to
solve social problems. That mindset is prominent
today and is often signified by the phrase " there is
an 'app' for that. "
Johnston begins his story with Howard Scott and
the Technocracy movement, a group that believed
that government should be run by the technically
trained. Scott, a self-educated engineer, came into
public view when enthusiasm for engineers and
their work was riding high-the decade after the end
of World War I. Recall that the United States elected
a civil engineer, Herbert Hoover, to the presidency
in 1928.
Scott became the public face of the Technical Alliance that emerged in 1919, lasting about

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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2021

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