The elephant in the room
Today's Question: When scholars write about communication technologies, they often focus on successful technologies. Successful technologies, in turn, are usually described as ever-expanding or "diffusing" throughout society until they are widespread. In this context, Fischer's analysis of the decline in rural telephony in Chapter 4 is remarkable and unusual. Please evaluate this argument in chapter 4. You might comment on his evidence for the decline, his analysis, or his explanation of it. Is the explanation convincing? You might compare it to discussions of other technologies we have read. Does this analysis demonstrate a strength or weakness in his method? (Or, Why did he find this decline when other scholars rarely if ever highlight any declines?)
Fischer’s attention concerning the decline in rural telephone usage may be remarkable in the historical scholarship regarding technology, but it also highlights a serious flaw with his methodology and rationale. This flaw may not just solely reside within Fischer, it may indicate a flaw that underlies the entire approach of examining the history of technology and its social impact.
Fischer argues in chapter four of America Calling: A social history of the Telephone to 1940, that “when... the burdens of rural telephony increased after 1920- higher rates, disinterest from commercial companies, tough economic times- many farmers gave it up. They now had alternatives to the often irritating telephone service, the automobile and radio in particular, to meet some of the same ends” (pg. 107). Fischer’s statement seems to provide a neat and tidy summation of the decline in rural telephone service, except that it completely ignores a tremendously significant social and environmental event that affected rural life in the 1930’s- the dustbowl.
Fischer does an admirable job indicating the value of the telephone as a social network (pp. 98-99) with particular care given to the significant benefits and applications that telephone service had for rural dwellers over and above that for urban inhabitants. However, if one considers that 2.5 million people moved from the Plain States west during the dust bowl (the time period that Fischer remarks in declining telephone use on farms), one starts to seriously question Fischer’s concluding statements of higher phone rates and commercial indifference as the rationale for declining rates of telephone user ship in rural areas as still being valid.
Frankly, I am astounded that Fischer fails to notice the effect that the dust bowl, often referred to as “the largest migration in US history” could have had on his data. By focusing solely on statistical data gathered by the US Census Bureau that is concerned with the percentages of households with telephones (farm vs non-farm) the larger story is omitted, or at the very least, disguised. One could call into question the decline of sample size of the farmers who were able to stay on their land, arguing that they had a greater financial stability than those farmers that had to abandon their now fallow land, and thus the rate of telephone decline was actually larger than Fischer notes. However, the larger question that this omission raises for me concerns the very approach of studying the history of technology: how can scholars provide social histories concerning technology when social use and technology seem to be so intrinsically linked, and how do they account for factors that they regard outside their area of expertise? Fischer seems to avoid technological determinism, but has he succumbed to a “lesser offense” of technological centrism?
