Contenu du sommaire

The development of large technical infrastructure systems, changes in the technology pool, and changes in societal governance are closely interrelated. Political and economic structures shaped the emerging modern traffic and communication systems, which in turn facilitated the growth of the strong modern state. Today, with further technological advances, we observe parallel changes from hierarchical to network forms in society and in large technical systems.

Many of the newer large technical systems depend upon increasingly powerful networks of information and communication systems. Unlike the telegraph or the telephone, these computerized networks are not passive tools; they are active, dynamic, evolving systems that impose upon users both open and tacit rules and demands for compliance and conformai behavior. Traditional models and methods for analyzing and regulating technical operations and infrastructure are based largely on historical cases of centralized, hierarchical systems. They seem inadequate to the task of understanding the diffuse, diversified, and decentralized forms that are now emerging.

This essay analyses the growth of large technical systems in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For examples, it uses the development of railways in the early nineteenth century and later during the second half of the twentieth century. It also analyzes the problems in developing electric power networks, particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The purpose of the work is to describe large technical systems at the time of their foundation with the emphasis upon their technical configurations. The paper then analyses the adjustments such systems must make when they interface with other enterprises at the time when they cross political, cultural or geographic boundaries. One issue which is highlighted is the problem of whether large technical systems are driven mainly by engineering forces or whether the predominant forces are political or economic.