Project Summary: SHOT 50th Anniversary Workshop This proposal seeks NSF assistance in developing a workshop to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). The workshop, to take place the day before the annual meeting in Washington, DC in the fall of 2007, will be hosted by the National Academy of Engineering. Workshop sessions will examine and discuss scholarly trends and patterns and new approaches to the field. The goal is to enable the Society to encourage its members and other scholars working on the history of technology to pursue work in the newest directions using the newest approaches and insights. Since technology is a vital and omnipresent element of modern society, SHOT also seeks to press beyond the internal and professional questions about the state of the field and extend the reach of our scholarship, connecting to the widest possible external audience. Thus the workshop will be structured and conducted in ways that help make our understandings of technology accessible to other groups that share an interest in, and concerns about, the interactions of technology and society. Thus the workshop has both scientific merit and broader impact, as the NSF expects. Scientific Merit The scientific merit of this project lies in the effort to assess and evaluate the main contours of the history of technology, by devoting an entire day to discussions before the regular annual meeting. This arrangement allows the largest possible participation by historians of technology. Presenters will represent the full diversity of the Society, as the workshop seeks to present exciting scholarship in terms of approaches and subjects. The participants will include both beginning and senior members of SHOT and visitors and guests from outside the history of technology. The Society will strongly encourage participation by graduate students through its travel grant program. The primary intent is to delineate promising areas and outstanding examples of scholarship as SHOT and its members enter a sixth decade of existence. The Broader Impact The broader impact of this workshop resides only partially in the educational opportunity that inevitably will result from the participation of a significant number of the Societys attendees in this special event. As important is the Societys effort to reach out to scholars and experts in other fields of academic and in other professional organizations who share an interest in technology but who have not been connected to SHOT specifically. The workshop will continue the Societys attempts to renew and strengthen linkages to engineers and engineering, building a bridge to the National Academy of Engineering, which will host the meeting. SHOT also will strengthen linkages to scholars in other areas of history and the social sciences and to policy makers. As one SHOT member put it, our target audience (outside SHOT) should be that small army of academics and intellectuals who are dealing with the real problems of the world and need the kind of historical perspective that only we can provide. Or as another historian observed, this workshop is designed to explore the relevancy of the history of technology in the modern world. To further this goal, the Society will produce an edited volume including the best papers from the workshop as a special issue of its journal, Technology and Culture. Moreover several sessions will be videotaped so that they may be streamed on the Societys web page as part of SHOTs expanding outreach effort using the WWW.
