The explanatory roles of non-human networks, interdependencies and delegates

McGuire, Granovetter and Schwartz use a historical sequence of events to demonstrate how an industry is being created through the construction of different types of networks and interdependencies that are related through the specific roles they are given by the enunciators of a specific program.

They describe a carefully and strategically constructed system where every entity has its unique role, and where the various elements can be seen as representing a fraction of the entire “collective” thing which constructs and shapes the new industry and enrolls elements of its environment to become consistent with its own shapes and structures.

When searching for possible explanations for the eventual domination of the central station system over the isolated plant alternative, M-G-S engage in describing these networks, systems and interdependencies and the specific roles they played. To exemplify matters, let me start by quoting from their discussion about the technological “network” system:

“In developing his incandescent bulb, Edison turned away from low-resistance, high-current lights that others had experimented with because his calculations showed that central stations would have to use fantastic amounts of copper wire in order to connect up any substantial area lighted in this way. Instead, he turned to the high-resistance, low current model that he eventually made to succeed.

He also developed new kinds of generators (then called “dynamos”) that could drive such a system. From the very outset of his work, Edison was guided by this overarching concept of a whole electric distribution system of which all the parts must be fitted into place. In contrast with other inventors who searched only for some magical incandescing substance, he worked out all the supporting structure of his system; its power supply, conductors and circuit, and then came back to determine what kind of light would be demanded by it”

(Josephson 1959:211) (p. 220)

Technology-making obviously played a vital role. It created a representation of Edison’s vision as well as a network system where each part represented a node specifically related to other nodes. Each point as well as the whole was also related to specific institutional arrangements which defined property rights, patent rights etc. They were also related to specific organizations like Edison’s laboratories and manufacturing plants, to engineers working at these sites and to what might be called Edison’s financial system or -network. Technology represents one type of related network which both defines elements of the collective and holds it together.

The role of Edison’s laboratories is also described as a very essential part of the system:

“Edison had never been the solitary inventor working in his late night laboratory. Francis Jehl, who had worked there described the Menlo Park operations thus: “Edison is really a collective noun and means the work of many men” (quoted in Lindgren 1979:17). From sometime in the early 1870’s, when his lab in Newark, through the legendary Menlo Park period (1876-1881), when so many important technological breakthroughs took place, Edison employed about 200 inventors and technicians. After the move to New York, when the laboratory on Goerck Street guided the success of the Pearl Street station, at least 200 (and possibly perhaps as many as 500) additional employees passed through the Edison laboratories. These individuals, most of them inventors and tinkerers, became the heart of electrical manufacturing and generation in the United States. Many were promoted internally, so that most of the executives of the various Edison manufacturing companies (…) rose from the laboratory. (p.

224)

The expansion of the central station system is here argued to have been a collective enterprise through which numerous engineers were trained and skilled as well as were contributing to the innovation activities within the framework of Edison’s large project. The expansion of the central station alternative came to rest with a process of delegation to these men, who through the laboratories grew into advanced representations or delegates of Edison’s visionary program as well as to become important nodes in his expanding network.

The role of the Edison laboratory was accordingly not only to invent new devices. It was also to associate with talented engineers and to transform them into qualified representations of the vision, who could be trusted to take on large delegated responsibilities. Trust in this sense, was largely a function of processes of translation where those to be trusted became

representations of the program – of shared understandings within the network. The laboratory accordingly represented a body of structures and activities which formatted both human and non-human elements to play specific roles within the expanding collective.

What we see here, is not an expansionary process which is driven by economic superiority or some abstract impersonal pressures in society. It is a process driven by a dedicated production of human as well as non-human networks which constitute a grand construction of industry project. It appears that in order to explain large scale radical changes in society, we will have also to trace the system which produces qualified representations of the core of the collective. A simple illustration of the Edison system is provided in figure 3.1. below.

Figure 3.1. Production of representations for expansion through a process of delegation

Production of representations: Delegation: Expansion:

M-G-S continue their article by presenting some of the most important associates of Edison, the companies they took responsibility for and the various economic arrangements between Edison and these men. The various companies typically obtained exclusive licenses from EELC to produce certain devices to the central station system as well as investment capital.

Individuals who had contributed with important inventions, were given shares in their future revenues. These constructions formed interrelated networks of firms and of economic contracts, which added to the technological and the interpersonal network systems. They all played their important roles in transforming Edison’s vision into reality. Even though the interpersonal relations obviously were important, the other networks were virtually inseparable from the interpersonal, and the powers of the

Laboratory:

Prod. of technological representations (A, B, C,……) Education of human

representations (G,H,I,……..)

Edison/EECL

Local utilities

Manufacturing of electrical devises Pearl Street

A, B,..

G, H,..

New laboratories K, L,..

relationships within the entire “empire” obviously followed from the aggregated strength of the multiple types of relations, and not primarily from anyone particular of them.