What Could Have Been...
Today's question:
Douglas has written an explanation of the social construction of radio in order to avoid technological determinism. The "constructors" proposed in this book are inventors, the press, amateur operators, the military, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and others. One sure way to avoid "determinism" is to advance a narrative that contains more than one possible outcome. Can you use the materials in this book to propose a plausible alternative way that radio might have developed in the U.S.? If yes, explain the alternative. If not, discuss what information you would need in order to propose an alternative (that is, information that you don't have in this book).
Response:
In her book “Inventing American Broadcasting” Susan Douglas relates a narrative story of the development of the radio in the United States. While Douglas, herself, never explicitly offers an alternative route for radio to have been developed her emphasis on individual personalities, business interests, and social forces offer the reader a lot of “what ifs” that keep one wondering if this was the only way things could have turned out.
While these “what ifs” work skillfully to keep “determinism” at bay, Douglas does not supply her readers with all the information possible to truly develop a “plausible alternative” to the way that radio was developed. I think that the main barrier for a more tangible alternative is actually one of the features that made the book most enjoyable to read, the focus on telling a historical narrative. This narrative has a tendency to place a heavier emphasis on the paths that were taken as opposed to the paths that were abandoned. There are however many moments, where we are able to individually postulate on how things could be different. What if Marconi had been successful at his first attempt to sell the entire wireless system to shipping companies? Would he have been as concerned about advancing a policy of “nonintercommunication” if he were not leasing the machines? (69-71) Or later with the U.S. governments first began requiring ships to possess and utilize radio technology? (220) What if they had simultaneously enacted laws that would organize the use of certain frequencies for certain activities? This system could have been very different than the one enacted as a reaction to the Titanic disaster. Any of these changes could have had long lasting implications for the way radio works in the U.S. today, but ultimately these were not the strategies employed and as a result we are only left to wonder about the possibility that things could have been different. Douglass’ method of casting doubt is limited mostly by the historical record itself, with its bias toward what was as opposed to what could have been.