Schriftenreihe der Forschungsgruppe "Große technische Systeme"
des Forschungsschwerpunkts Technik - Arbeit - Umwelt am Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung
FS II 92-505
The Technology-Culture Spiral:
Three Examples o f Technological Developments in Everyday Life
Ingo Braun
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung gGmbH (WZB) Reichpietschufer 50, D-1000 Berlin 30
Tel. (030)-25 491-0 Fax (030)-25 491-684
THE TECHNOLOGY-CULTURE SPIRAL: THREE EXAMPLES OF TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Summary
The author first gives an overview on the current research debate in Germay on everyday life technology—a debate which typically polarizes technology and culture. The author, however, develops the hypothesis that processes of cultural differentiation and increasing technicalization of everyday life are not in contra
diction to each other but closely intertwined, displaying a spiral pattern of development. Finally, such spiral dynamics are reconstructed for the development in three spheres of home activities—washing, heating, contraception—for the past three decades.
DIE TECHNIK-KULTUR-SPIRALE: DREI BEISPIELE FÜR ENTWICKLUNGSVERLÄUFE VON ALLTAGSTECHNIK
Zusammenfassung
In dem Beitrag wird zunächst ein Überblick über die in Deutschland geführte und durchgehend von der Gegenüberstellung von Technik und Kultur geprägte For
schungsdebatte über Alltagstechnik gegeben. Im Anschluß hieran entwickelt der Autor die These, daß Prozesse der kulturellen Differenzierung und der fortschrei
tenden Technisierung des privaten Alltags keineswegs in Widerspruch zueinander stehen, sondern in Form eines spiralförmigen Entwicklungsmusters eng mit
einander verschränkt sind. Solche spiralförmigen Dynamiken werden exem
plarisch für die Entwicklung in den Handlungsfeldem "Waschen", "Heizen" und
"Verhüten" während der letzten drei Jahrzehnte nachgezeichnet.
Introduction
In the private spheres of everyday life, technization began later than in the working world and, altogether, the process here has been a more steady and less spectacular one. It attracted at first only very little attention from social science. In contrast, how
ever, technization in the working world (paradigmatically represented by the machine tool) has long been a favorite subject of social science discourse and a favorite object of social science research. Thus, in the postwar era the social phenomenon we call
"everyday technology" has been relegated to various specialized subdisciplines of the social sciences such as consumer research, city planning, media studies and the sociol
ogy of medicine. Some notable exceptions to this relegation include the development of the automobile and its importance for the national economy and the urban setting, the introduction of television and its corresponding impacts on public opinion and family life, and finally (though seldom part of the technology-in-everyday-life debate) the introduction of the contraceptive pill, its demographic consequences and accompa
nying changes in sexual behavior. In general, however, only with the introduction of the new electronic media into private households in the mid-1980s did the array of ordinary household appliances and machines in daily use begin to receive greater attention from German social science scientists.
One of the few common points of reference in the social science debate over technol
ogy in everyday life (TEDL) has been the fact, largely established by economists, that in the industrialized countries, especially since the Second World War, the level of technization in everyday life has progressively approached that of the working world.
This fact has indeed become a source of irritation not only for business and industrial sociologists who traditionally claim the technology subject as their prerogative, but also for family and everyday life sociologists who have for the most part traditionally relied upon not having had to deal with die technology subject matter at all.
The following data and considerations are intended to help fill the gap left by the long neglect and underestimated importance of technology for private daily life and, con
versely, the underestimated importance of private daily life for technology as a phe
nomenon affecting society as a whole. According to Hampel et al., out of the total sum spent for consumer goods in West Germany, nearly 400 billion deutschmarks are apportioned to household appliances. This is equal to one-half the total cost of sup
plies for all of German industry. Thus, individual private households in Germany have accumulated an investment capital in technical appliances, in an amount equal to the cost of equipping the average workplace. The same is true for the human capital in
vested in order to run private "appliance parks". It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the net product value of house work supported technically - that is, the sum total of goods and services produced by fully technically supported private households - is greater than the net product value of market oriented production (Krüsselberg, 1988, p. 114).
These facts lead directly to two important approaches within the sociological TEDL debate. First, the question arises as to why the technization process in everyday life is characterized by less conflicts or is at least less conspicuous than it is in the key indus
trial areas of modem societies. More abstractly, we may formulate the question thus:
What essential differences exist between technology development in and outside eve
ryday life? Second, and more important for German TEDL research, is the question:
how advancing technization in everyday life can be related, for example, to the disinte
gration of the traditional family structure, to the trend toward privatization, or to the frequently diagnosed change in social values. In essence, we are trying here to find the connection between technological change and culture change.
The first part of this paper gives an overview of the TEDL debate in Germany, charac
terized throughout by the technology-versus-culture confrontation. On the basis of this overview, I shall then present and defend the thesis that (a) cultural differentiation and (b) advancing technization in private everyday life are in no way contradictory processes: rather, these processes are linked together in a closely interlocking, spiral pattern of development. In the second part of this paper, I attempt to illustrate this spi
ral pattern of development in postwar Germany using three selected examples of mundane activities in everyday life, namely, contraception, heating, and washing. In the third part of this paper I will look more closely at structural changes in light of a general interpretation of the previously described developments. The fourth and final part of the paper examines why the technization process appears less conflict-ridden and why it has developed more steadily in everyday life than in the spheres of business and industry.
1. The Technology-in-Everyday-Life Debate: Conceptual Issues
What is notable about the German TEDL debate which began in the late 1980s, is the difficulty one has in getting any sort of overview of what is actually going on. This is an immediate consequence of the fact that the object of debate is very difficult to define precisely and substantially and, moreover, that the "everyday life" concept from phenomenology is for this purpose insufficient. Pragmatic definitions of what we have
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come to understand under the term "everyday life" are, in effect, the only definitions we have at present (Braun, 1992, p. 16).
At least part of the confusion in the TEDL debate can be attributed to culturalistic and constructivist approaches in technology studies (see Joerges, 1988b). Unlike, for instance, industrial sociology oriented technology research, culturalistic/constructivist trends in TEDL research have a relatively low generalization potential and, hence, only a limited value for purposes of debate. Therefore, it is comparatively difficult-and not just for outsiders—to distinguish unambiguous statements, clearly defined positions, or even the main controversies within the TEDL debate. But despite these difficulties and despite the danger that one may not do justice to the many detailed conceptual differ
ences, one can nevertheless order all of the various views represented in the TEDL debate under one of two categories: (1) the rationalization theses or (2) the culturali
zation theses.
Rationalization Theses
Proponents of the rationalization theses assume that, analogously to the increasing use of technology in industry, the increasing use of technology in everyday life is linked to the processes of economizing, standardizing and specialization. The classic areas of housework, namely, house cleaning, washing, and cooking, will serve to illustrate these processes. For instance, the history of meal preparation illustrates nicely the increasing tendency to rationalize various facets of this activity from the introduction of modem gas and electric ranges for cooking and baking; to the blender, coffeemaker, and pressure cooker, to refrigerators, freezers, microwave ovens, and dishwashers;
leading finally to innovation in food preparation, food storage and meal preparation.
The various appliances listed above represent the instruments of time-saving, money
saving work. They have simplified drastically the preparation of food and meals them
selves in private households to the extent cries of complaint may now be heard about standardization and the so-called "fast-food culture" (exemplified by the TV-dinner).
Individual variations of the rationalization theses can, in turn, be distinguished further on the basis of two additional criteria: (a) whether (or not) technization particularly disrupts or generates crises in everyday behavior; (b) whether rationalization is more likely to have the force of a "hard logic" or that of a "soft principle" (see figure 7).
A hard concept of rationality (taken by many authors to be the equating of technology with purpose oriented rationality) together with the assumption of technology caused crisis you can find in theses claiming, for instance, that the spread of modem commu-
ideations technology means the impoverishment and depersonalization of communi
cations in general (Mettler-Meibom, 1985); that it portends a general desensitivity in day-to-day handling or, ultimately, the "algorithmization" of everyday behavior (Bamme et al., 1983; Hochgemer, 1986). These assumptions are exemplified above all by the application of computer based media and television. It is further assumed that the rational counterbalance introduced by technology in everyday life will therefore supplant other types of counterbalances. Thus, regulation of behavior in everyday life appears here to be a kind of zero sum game in which rational forms of behavior can only be carried through at the cost of other types of behavior.
There are many other theses variants that likewise assume that technization in every
day life will be accompanied by some form of crisis, but these take a softer tack in the form of principles of rationality. A typical example of one such variant can be found in the thesis that industrial patterns of rationality and the profit interests of technology manufacturers preshape (in the sense of restrict) consumer technology application such that these technologies do not necessarily fulfill specific consumer demands in the context of private households (Orland and Schlag, 1986; Kettschau, 1987). For instance, the development and subsequent mushrooming of electric appliances in Ger
man kitchens during the 1920s and 1930s was pushed by the German electricity gen
eration and supply industry in order to win over private households as a potential new sales market. But despite technological expansion, in the most important household areas technology's promise of a more rational way of doing housework has not been fulfilled (Hausen, 1987). Under different sociopolitical conditions, however, this demand could indeed be met. The regulation of activity brought about by technology in everyday life appears here as well to be something like a "foreign body" that puts additional financial strain and work burdens on households. If it gets out of control, it can result in misorientation in household management in general.
Similar concepts of rationalization, but ones that do not postulate ensuing crises, can be grouped under the following comparatively general thesis: With progressive tech
nization in everyday life, economic and scientific rationalities, as opposed to "cultural"
ones, become increasingly more important (Weingart, 1988). In the course of technol
ogy development, differences in the construction and design of appliance technology will be ironed out. That is, it will become increasingly less probable that the character or shape of specific model lines or technical styles will follow regionally different use contexts, or be determined by specific cultural patterns of differentiation. One is reminded here of the success of aerodynamic design in automobile production to
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reduce wind resistance: between 1975 and 1985 producer specific differences in car designs disappeared almost entirely. Therefore, an increase in contextually independ
ent and, in that sense, universalized forms of behavior are to be expected. On this view, however, the regulation of everyday behavior is not to be construed as a zero sum game. Although economic and scientific rationalities dampen the influence of cultural differences on technology development, as a result of this, technology and culture (respectively, everyday technology and everyday culture) become more contin
gent upon one another. And precisely because of this contingency, technology becomes more accessible in everyday life.
For the sake of systematic thoroughness, one other variant must be mentioned that likewise entails no assumption of crisis but that is nevertheless categorized as one of the hard concepts of rationality. I refer to those classic theses, often associated with the engineering sciences and hardly represented anymore in the social sciences, that assume that technology can relieve the individual of the burdens of everyday life—that technology can "liberate" everyday behavior from traditional norm structures. In the trade union debates of the 1920s and 1930s (and, in part, of the postwar period) it was naturally assumed that automation would liberate the worker from the hardship and duress associated with factory production just as it would liberate women from the drudgery and duress typically associated with housework. Here, too, the regulation of behavior is seen as a kind of zero sum game whereby, in the course of technology development, the border between the "realm of necessity" and the "realm of freedom"
is constantly shifted—in the long run, in favor of more freedom.
Culturalization Theses
Proponents of culturalization theses dissociate themselves critically from the
"determinism" of the rationalization theses and the assumed fixation on technology assessment issues. For them the technology and its use in everyday life depend to a great extent upon the cultural orientation of the actors in the manufacturing and tech
nology application processes. These theses have been made plausible above all through case studies showing that benefits we automatically associate with a specific technol
ogy can change drastically in the course of cultural changes; or showing that a specific everyday life problem, when it occurs in different countries with different cultural traditions, will result in the development of notably different appliances. A good example of the former can be seen in the telephone. In Europe the telephone did not at first serve the purpose of long-distance conservation between parties as one would expect; rather, it was used as a transmission device for broadcasting concerts, for
instance. A good example of the latter can be seen in the development of the washing machine. Unlike washing machines in the United States or Japan, the European appli
ances are constructed with a "boiling cycle" (the wash water is heated to 90°C). This difference points to different customs in dress and different ideas of hygiene in the United States or Japan and Europe. One can distinguish between the different variants of the culturalization theses on the basis of (a) whether (or not) technization processes are associated with disruptions or crises in everyday life and (b) whether the techniza
tion process should be interpreted as a specific part of, or an expression of cultural development (the "hard" cultural approach), or whether the link between technology and culture should be seen as a co-evolutionary relationship (the "soft" cultural con
cept) (see figure 2).
A typical example of a variant in which crisis is assumed and that hence may be labelled a "hard" cultural approach is the thesis that the massive technization of private households in the highly industrialized countries following the Second World War has led increasingly to a dead-end (Rammert, 1986). The growing technical efficiency of household organization and technology induced pressures on communitarian practice as well as on the natural environment are increasingly coming up against limits. These limits can be traced back to the success of the "industrial-consumerist" culture model that dominates with equal force the technology concept of manufacturers of everyday technology (industry) and that of its users (private households/consumers). Generally, then, technology is here to be understood as a genuinely cultural phenomenon in its utility dimension as well. Correspondingly, the problems associated with its spread and use in everyday life appear to be a consequence of cultural misorientation—in this case, as a result of the spread of a technical ««culture (Unkultur).
Social constructivist and sociopsychological case studies of everday life technology are based on an equally hermetic concept of culture, but without its being tied to any assumptions of crisis. In accordance with their microsociological, hermeneutic orien
tation, such case studies usually contain only very general assumptions about the social function of everday technology. The social constructivist case studies are directed towards differing interpretations of technology and views concerning its use. These interpretations take into account the fact that the inventors and innovators have con
flicting interests and different cultural orientations (see the case studies on bakelite by Bijker 1987; on the bicycle by Pinch and Bijker 1987; on the electric car by Calion 1987). The predetermined use assigned to a given technical appliance is therefore seen as the result of social bargaining processes. As such, it is to be considered a "social
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Figure 1
R a tio n a liz a tio n Theses
^'"•'■ ^h n p a ct on every- day l i f e R a tio n a l-^ '"-'-x .
i t y Concept
C ri si s -rid den Development
Cri si s -fre e (Contingency) Hard
(zero sum game)
displacement by technology
burdens re lie v e d through technology
Soft
(no zero sum game)
problems re s u ltin g from technology
---- --- ---
u n iv e rs a liz a tio n : through technology
Figure 2
C u ltu r a liz a tio n Theses
^ " \ £ m P act on every- day 1 i f e C u ltu ra l
Concept
Cri si s -rid d e n Development
C ris i s -fre e (Contingency)
Hard te ch n o lo g ica l technology as
(herm etic) u n cu ltu re a medium
Soft c u ltiv a te d technology as
(non-herm etic) techno!ogy a symbol
construct" tied to the cultural idiosyncrasies of the respective context from which it has emerged. Complementary to the above set of studies are several sociopsychological studies of the use context of technical appliances. The different styles of use and correspondingly many interpretations of a given technology are treated here as forms of expression from the individual processing of sociocultural norms decisive for the use context (Turkle, 1984; Brunner et al., 1987; Pflüger and Schurz, 1987). For both research directions, then, technology appears to be a highly plastic sociocultural medium through which cultural orientations of every type can be fixed, conveyed or spread.
A typical example of a culturalization thesis variant containing no assumption of crisis resulting from technology and being at the same time based on a "soft" concept of culture is the thesis that with progressive technization in everyday life—above all, with the proliferation of electronic appliances and equipment—the extent and importance of symbolically conveyed forms of social behavior increase (Homing, 1985). The basic idea is that unique, creative forms of appropriation and use of technology extend the set of initially use-related meanings to include symbolic meanings and, in so doing, to include specific cultural meanings. It is assumed that the use of a technology and its symbolic value are, for the most part independent; but, both sides are dependent upon one another to the extent that different types of technology are differently suited to symbolization. Thus, technology's worth in everyday life derives first and foremost from its function as carrier of cultural symbols. Technization in everyday life appears to be spreading progressively in accordance with the store of symbols associated with day-to-day communication.
The "electronic cottage" utopias (Toffler, 1980) as well as the many scenarios of decentralized, flexible use of "alternative" technologies presuppose a soft concept of culture and, at the same time, a crisis in everyday life already in full swing. The crisis in everyday life will be determined by the limits of social and environmental carrying capacity. The alternative technology scenarios are based essentially on the thesis that, despite a crisis, the currently available technologies allow us to create more flexible, culturally manifold social units integrating work and leisure. As part of the rapid and overall change in values in the industrial societies a specific development of technol
ogy spurred by postmodern values can indeed be observed (Koslowski, 1987). In this case, technology development appears to open itself to cultural influences, to fit itself to cultural conditions, and finally to develop into a "cultivated" technology (Rammert eta l., 1991).
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The rationalization and culturalization theses sketched above can be diagrammed into two mirror-image interpretative patterns of societal development in everyday life.
Whereas rationalization theses emphasize the tendency to standardize everyday life behavior, and the convergence of the everyday world and the working world resulting from this standardization, culturalization theses stress the diversification in everyday life behavior and the resulting dissociation of the everyday world from the working world. While the former theses are considered to be a consequence of technization in everyday life, the latter appear to have many consequences for technization in every
day life (cf. Joerges, 1988c, p. 47).
The Technology-Culture Spiral
Contrary to both the rationalization and culturalization theses is the spiral thesis. This I shall now attempt to explain. The spiral thesis assumes that, at least in terms of tech
nology in everyday life, rationalization and culturalization are not opposed to one another. The spiral thesis, therefore, does not attempt or purport to explain a pending or just beginning crisis in everyday life. Rather, it focuses on the need for explanation of the apparent lack of conflict associated with and the seeming inconspicuousness of increasing technization in everyday life.
The spiral thesis can be described generally and relatively schematically through a recursive process as follows, (a) The acquisition/development of a technology is usu
ally the response to problems resulting from the vast array of everyday life activities, (b) Technology makes it possible for us to deal with this vast array insofar as its appli- cation/use formally integrates previously unconnected (or unconnectable) activities and, in so doing, turns them into uniform, component parts of complex systems of action, (c) On the basis of this formal integration, new options for action open up that are external to the integrated system of action at hand; but, at the same time, these options are dependent upon that system, (d) If we decided to make use of the new options for action and recombine them with the forms of action already available, then the diversity of everyday life activity increases beyond its original starting point, (a') This in turn leads to problems of regulation on a higher level, and to the acquisition of additional technologies (see figure 3).
Within these dynamics, the use of technology has increasingly become a constitutional condition for differentiation in everyday life behavior. And, conversely, the diversity of behavior has increasingly become constitutional conditions for the technization process in everyday life. Technization (from a to c) and culturalization (from c to a)
F I G U R E 3
T E C H N I Z A T I 0
(consequences for technology)
( impacts of technology)
C u L T U R A L
I
Z
A
T
I
0
form two reciprocal parts of an upwardly spiralling dynamic process—therefore the name "spiral thesis" (cf. Joerges, 1988c, p. 47).
That homogenization and diversification in everyday behavior are closely linked is a fact that can be demonstrated even by sociohistorical studies of housework that adhere strictly to the industrialization paradigm (cf. Cowan, 1983 and 1987). As a result of this, technization of private households seems to be linked to an apparently paradoxi
cal development. That is, technization is linked to a form of household organization based upon "appliance parks" that bears increasing similarity to industrial organization ("industrialization") and, parallel to this, to a growing "emotionalization" of house- work--still carried out mainly by women. Accordingly, the heterogeneity of modem behavioral standards the housewife must fulfill as provider, organizer, wife and mother becomes an essential feature of housework itself.
In contrast to rationalization theses, the spiral thesis emphasizes those technization impulses coming from the sphere of eveiyday life, rather than those coming from the core areas of industrial societies. The problems of heterogeneity in everyday behavior, not crisis-laden homogeneity, have become the new focal point. In terms of its problem focus, therefore, the spiral thesis comes closer to Luhmann-type global diagnosis that sees "reduction of complexity" as the main problem of social systems in general. In contrast to the culturalization theses, the spiral thesis relativizes the supposed techno- logy-free self-dynamics of cultural developments. Here, the spiral thesis comes closer to being a set of theoretical assumptions about modernization in terms of the
"pluralization of private lifestyles" (c.f. Hampel et al., 1992).
2. Three True Stories
In the following I shall trace the spiral dynamic through developments in the areas of contraception, heating, and washing that have taken place since the 1950s in Germany.
To this end, I shall abandon in part the more abstract formal speech of "-izations", in favor of some elements of narrative rhetoric as used by technology and cultural histori
ans. To begin, I will present the "main characters" from whose perspective each respective story will be told.
The main character in my story of contraception is the cycle computer. The cycle computer is a small apparatus used in contraception similar to a pocket calculator. It contains an exact thermometer for measuring body temperature and a small electronic display. It is used in conjunction with the temperature method of contraception,
whereby the periods of no fertility within the female menstrual cycle are indicated on the basis of fluctuations in the user's body temperature. The cycle computer records the daily temperature of the user, stores these data and, on the basis of information gathe
red and processed over the cycle, gives a prognosis for the "undangerous" days in the coming cycle. Despite the initial success of the cycle computer following its introduc
tion in the early 1980s, it never gained more than a tiny niche in the vast market of contraceptive devices. Because this device offers essentially no protection to the user during the fertile periods of the menstrual cycle, it is frequently used in conjunction with other contraceptive devices, particularly condoms or diaphragms. The precursor of the cycle computer method was the old, manual temperature method, whereby the user calculated her own periods of high or low fertility with the aid of a standard ther
mometer and a cycle calendar on which temperatures were recorded and a line graph drawn to indicate fluctuations. The probable next generation of the cycle computer is the hi-tech version of the same introduced in the mid-1980s. This device works on a more advanced basis of temperature data calculation, using automatic reference date comparison for easier application. Among other things, it also offers the user the options of deliberate conception, planned birth, and choice of sex of the offspring.
The main character in my story about heating is the heating meter. The heating meter is a small apparatus similar in appearance to a thermometer, containing a small liquid- filled tube and corresponding scale. It is mounted on individual radiators or heating elements. Since 1981, the heating meter is required by German law in all centrally heated apartments and homes. Once a year, a "meter reader" from a heating service company goes around from apartment to apartment to obtain readings of the amount of evaporated fluid from the meter tube from each radiator. The heating meter is used in conjunction with a variety of other technical equipment related to heating and ventila
tion such as radiators, valves, furnaces, chimneys, doors, windows and wall insulation.
The forerunner of today's heat billing system was the fixed rate billing system, whereby the total heat energy consumption for an apartment house was divided up among the renters according to the square meter area of each individual apartment. The next generation of the heating meter based billing system is likely to be the new cen
tralized energy consumption metering system introduced in the early 1980s. This new hi-tech heating meter makes it possible to "read" the meters "long-distance" to deter
mine exact energy consumption. It creates an automatic breakdown of energy con
sumption for specific time frames and specific rooms in an apartment. The system can also calculate the heat flow between individual apartments in an apartment house.
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The protagonist in my story about washing clothes is the washing machine. Since the early 1970s, the washing machine has become a standard appliance in German house
holds. Today, nearly 90% of all households have one. Washing machines have always been used in conjunction with a variety of other technical appliances, consumer goods and services (e.g., detergents, clothing and textiles, dryers, irons, electricity supply and water supply). The standard washing machine in use in Germany today is the hilly automatic drum washing machine with a wide ranging, variable program and spin-dry cycle. The precursors of today's modem standard washing machines were the so-called Kesselwäsche (a literal reference to washing kettles or cauldrons), an assembly of separate apparatuses installed in the laundry rooms (Waschküchen) of apartment houses for doing the laundering stepwise—heating the wash water, washing, and wringing. The "next generation" of today's standard washing machines can be seen in the so-called component washing machines (Komponentenwaschmaschineri) intro
duced in 1991. These new eco-, hi-tech appliances are not designed for use with the normal prefabricated detergent mixtures: rather, they are designed for individual com
ponent washing agents that the washing machine automatically mixes and dispenses according to the type of dirt, type of textiles and quantity of wash to be done, in an environmentally friendly way
The Contraception Spiral
The history of the cycle computer basically reveals only one technical jump from the pencil plus thermometer method and its electronic counterpart, the cycle computer. In terms of my thesis, then, we are dealing here with only a single "spiral thread". Never
theless, this particular thread outlines the history of effective contraceptives in postwar Germany, especially the introduction of the "pill". This is perhaps the best-known example for far-reaching, radical change in many different areas of societal behavior—
for instance, love, family, and education—resulting from the close interaction between cultural development and technological development.
It is not generally known that the temperature method of contraception (which came more widely into use in the late 1950s), in conjunction with the condom was the start
ing point for the step-wise integration into everyday love-life of an effective but mat
ter-of-course method of contraception. For the man in the pre-pill era, next to the con
dom, the only practical alternative for contraception was, in effect, coitus interruptus.
For the woman, next to the temperature method, there remained only the rhythm method. The rhythm method, like the temperature method, was based on the principle of "choosing the right time" and on the same medical information, namely, the time of
ovulation in the menstrual cycle. Like coitus interruptus, the rhythm method used no technical support. However, neither coitus interruptus nor the rhythm method offered de facto any real, effective protection from unwanted pregnancy as was demonstrated in the highly popularized effectiveness estimates carried out in the late 1960s.
The range and use of available methods of contraception in the pre-pill era was domi
nated by a sexual morality still veiy heavily influenced by the church. The sexual rhetoric of this morality appealed strongly to bodily related notions of purity (e.g., venereal disease as punishment for sexual promiscuity, besmirchment or defilement of oneself). Love-life was defined in terms of reproduction; it was confined to the sanc
tum of marriage and every form of contraception except abstinence as a kind of
"family planning" was strictly taboo. The temperature method was therefore generally veiy well suited to everyday love-life conditions under heavily imposed moral con
straint. Although this method did not offer protection from venereal disease and its painful consequences (despite the availability of effective antibiotics), it was neverthe
less more easily accessible (and acceptable) than the condom. By the end of the 1960s, the temperature method constituted 10% of all practiced methods of contraception in West Germany (the condom represented 30%). The rhythm method, closely related to the temperature method, was, however, in its time the favored method of contracep
tion, constituting 40% (which, by the way, was at least one of the reasons for the high birth rate in the period preceding the era of the pill). Looking back to the era of the pill, it is important to emphasize that, by the end of the 1960s, men and women--in terms of the (ideal) division of responsibility for the family-felt responsible to the same degree for contraception (for more detailed information see Dose, 1989, and Braun, 1987, pp. 2 If.).
The cultural preconditions underlying the relatively rapid dominance of the pill in Germany (compared to elsewhere) between 1964 and 1971 were established by a liberalization of marital (and non-marital) sexual morality that began in the mid-1960s.
The new view of sexuality emphasized joyful satisfaction; sexuality was decoupled from procreation and marriage. Previously held taboos against contraception also loosened up with the removal of moral constraints on the family planning topos. From the multitude of impacts the pill has had, I shall emphasize only a few. Because of its long-lasting effectiveness, ease of application and convenience, and its complete in
dependence from sexual activity (one could, in effect, pratice "a little contraception on the side"), the pill led to a radical redivision of responsibilities for contraception and sexual hygiene. Contraception became the definitive responsibility of the woman,
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whereas sexual hygiene (up to this point, only rarely treated seriously) became the responsibility of the man.
With the pill, women had, for the first time, an effective, partner-independent instru
ment of "family planning". Carefully targeted use of this instrument in the period sub
sequent to its introduction contributed to a general weakening of the strict obligation for women to remain on the narrow career path of housewife and mother. In particular, the pill enabled younger women to have a degree of sexual freedom without having to sacrifice their education, vocational training and professional careers. On the other hand, because the pill was only available on prescription, the contraceptive practices of women, that had heretofore been a strictly private matter, now became a matter of public interest, relegated to the "care" of doctors. Younger women in particular suf
fered under this "compulsory exposure". Nevertheless this situation created an impor
tant, though often suppressed, motivational thrust for women to develop a more self- confident attitude towards their own bodies. As a by-product of the physician's profit
able business of prescribing the pill, women were able for the first time to consult the doctors on intimate matters of a serious nature. In the pre-pill era, such problems were all too often summarily dismissed as "typical woman's problems" or "typical woman's complaints", leaving women completely alone and on their own to deal with their dif
ficulties.
In the 1970s, as women began to demand sexuality free of the fear of unwanted preg
nancy and free of moral sanctions, and to insist upon more natural, self-assured contact to their own bodies, and as these demands became more differentiated and articulate, they began to be associated systematically with "side-effects" of the pill. At the same time, the real health impacts of the pill, some of which had already been anticipated in the 1960s by its avid opponents in the medical profession, began to emerge and become apparent to the users. The frustration over the pill (the so-called Pillenfrust}
that followed expressed itself at first in terms of demands on the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry for a low-side-effect and open-option contraceptive. This led to improved forms of the pill (e.g., the two-phase pill and the mini-pill) and to the development of nearly equally effective alternative contraceptive devices (e.g., the intra-uterine device, the diaphragm, spermicidal jellies, etc.). Nevertheless, none of the new alternative methods of contraception were able to combine the multitude of demands for non-interference with the body with those for unimpeded enjoyment of the body.
Attempts by the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry to find suitable alter
natives to the pill were only moderately successful. Following this came a push from various subcultures in the "new social movements" of the early 1980s for finding and putting to the test so-called alternative methods of contraception. This new impetus was based upon "natural" and self-determined as well as a self-assured relationship to one's own body. This approach was thus partnership oriented and, at the same time, stressed a relationship to the body free of interference by doctors. It was often accom
panied by criticism of the medical profession as being "fixated on pharmaceuticals"; at the same time, it demanded more "appropriate" technology. All of this led to a redis
covery of the rhythm method, a return to analysis of cervical secretion and even the temperature method, as well as to some relative adventurous testing of new contracep
tive methods (cf. Braun, 1989b, p. 197). That the old temperature method in its new electronic guise, the cycle computer, drew so much attention seemed to be largely due to the fact that the ecology movement in particular placed great hopes in microelec
tronics as the wave of the future--a supposedly cleaner, more people oriented alterna
tive to "big technology".
In the 1980s, the development of fancier, more advanced cycle computers was spurred by the explicit aim to drive the temperature method out of its subcultural niches. Cycle computers with reference date comparison and integrated options for conception can be seen basically as a kind of technical gathering point, whereby medical specialists and engineers attempted for the first time to make real advances in the temperature method which had been unchanged since the 1950s. In so doing, they attempted to ap
ply high performance technology standards to the practice of contraception that had been dominated for over 20 years by chemical, hormone based contraceptives. Thus, the hi-tech cycle computer was functionally designed to combine as far as possible all the advantages of time selection methods of contraception (e.g., independence from doctors, kindness to the body) with those of chemical, hormone based contraceptives (e.g., reliability, independence from sexual activity, convenience). This advance rep
resents once again the difficult attempt in everyday love-life to reconcile cultural demands for freely developing sexuality with demands for self-determination in rela
tion to one's own body, and with lifestyle planning that incorporates the notion of part
nership and an option for offspring.
Hi-tech cycle computers were nevertheless behind the times. The onslaught of AIDS had a profound impact upon everyday love-life; the powerful "purity" rhetoric of sex
ual intercourse re-emerged from its banishment to the realm of prostitution. In light of
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this development, hi-tech cycle computers represent more or less a provisional end
point in contraceptive technology development that began with the pill and was based upon the separation of contraception from sexual hygiene. And it will remain an end
point, at least so long as there is no cure for AIDS similar (and similarly problem-free) to antibiotics. The next direction contraceptive technology development is likely to take can be seen in the new "condoms for women" introduced in Germany in 1991.
This device is, in effect, a non-permeable rubber sack that lines the vagina all the way up to the labia, designed to prevent the penetration and entry of viruses into the body.
The Heating Spiral
The changes in the structure of household heating that took place in postwar Germany can also be characterized as a spirally formed coupling of the technization and cul
turalization processes. Heating technology development was altogether a more gradual process than contraception technology development. In comparison with the devel
opments in washing machine technology (which I shall discuss in the next section) it has gained more in cultural breadth but less in technical height (for more details, see Braun, 1992, pp. 124).
The social housing projects of the 1950s and 1960s provided the basis for the devel
opment to "everday heating" in residential buildings with central heating supply. In social housing, decentralized heating-provided mainly by coal and oil burning stoves or ovens—has been systematically pushed out and replaced with centrally operated heating systems designed to supply many households at once. The demands for "free expression" in private home decor were significant for the introduction of centralized heating facilities (similarly to the way they were for the introduction of the drum washing machines). Central heating created important preconditions necessary to meet these demands for free expression. It generated more living space and more leisure time through the shift away from the space intensive and work intensive individual heating ovens. It also meant that higher standards of cleanliness and comfort in apart
ments and houses could be met for the first time with the elimination of ashes, coal dust, smoke and soot created by heating ovens.
In contrast to the developments in washing machine technology, advances in heating technology (in particular, the shift to central heating) meant that a large part of house
hold heating moved from the private sphere into the public sphere. Central heating created a collective heating space in which the systems for calculating heat consump
tion (in conjunction with measurement technology) were settled with the responsibility
for "fairness" as a preventive measure to defend privacy so to speak. Initially, fairness semantics had relatively little significance for the first fixed rate billing system for heat consumption. Concern here was chiefly confined to the notion of fair charges for heating in relation to the landlord, as the heat producer, and the renter, as heat user.
Technically speaking, this first fixed rate system only recorded the energy input of the heating system. On the output side—that is, where the distribution of costs among the rental parties was concerned—simply dividing the costs on the basis of square meters of living space occupied seemed to be sufficient to guarantee fairness.
With the flowering of private home decor styles and the accompanying diversification of lifestyles and heat consumption styles in the 1960s and 1970s, gradual differences in consumption patterns began to emerge among rental households. As a result, the unfairness in the fixed rate billing system came to light. In particular, disparities in heating costs among individual rental parties pointed to the inherent inequity in this type of billing system. Initiatives from renters and renters' associations forced a grad
ual change in billing systems whereby billing was henceforth to be based on actual consumption calculated with the aid of the heating meter. Initially, this change was carried out chiefly in social housing units where apartment construction was most favorably suited to use of the heating meter. For the expansion of the heat consumption calculation and billing systems based on measurement technology, fair distribution of heating costs was the primary determining factor. Savings or even a fair distribution of individual chances for savings did not matter. The burden placed on the private sphere, resulting from the necessity to have the heating meters read by outside firms contracted specifically for this purpose, was accepted matter-of-factly. Although this burden was in fact only very minimal, the issue later proved to be conflict-rife.
In the latter half of the 1970s, rapidly escalating energy prices and a series of new laws to promote energy saving (die Heizkostenverordnung or Heating Cost Ordinance) that foresaw consumption based heating cost calculation becoming a general practice altered the overall situation drastically. Once the responsibility for saving energy was shifted to the individual households, many of the cultural achievements of central heating were called into questioned. In this new tight, many such achievements appeared to be contradictory. In fact, on the basis of the heating and ventilation equipment available in the early 1980s, energy savings could only be achieved at the cost of other important aspects of modem living. For instance, energy saving meant losses in the aesthetic value, communicative value, or ritual utility of the home in gen
eral; it also meant constraints on the flexible use of living space, impairment of indi
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vidual lifestyle preferences, losses in heating comfort in terms of the meanwhile high standards, and relinquishing one's "sovereignty" over time spent in heating.
The billing system based on heat consumption was also negatively affected by this development. The heating meter, proven in the homogeneous environment of new social housing units, failed to fulfill its task adequately in the relatively heterogeneous heating (and heating technology) environment of old buildings. In terms of the fairness issue, new demands grew out of the legal coupling of costly economy and cost distri
bution. Particularly important was the fair distribution of individual opportunities to save, which did not seem possible in the eyes of old building tenants because of the greater "locationally determined differences in heating needs" and the possibilities to
"steal" heat. This new set of demands could not be met at the beginning of the 1980s by either the heating meter or by the heating infrastructure of the living space in ques
tion.
Part of this long list of incompatibilities based on home decor and lifestyle prefer
ences, ideas of fairness, and real opportunities to save energy was eliminated in the course of the 1980s through advancements in heating technology, equipment and infrastructure. For instance, exterior insulation of buildings (generally supported by the state) not only reduced energy needs as a whole, but also enabled individual rental parties to save energy without drastically impairing their heating comfort. Heating economically no longer necessarily meant that less intensively used rooms would loose their complete living value during the heating period and function principally as stor
age rooms. In addition, exterior insulation reduced the locationally determined differ
ences in heating needs in buildings and, in so doing, contributed to a more fair distri
bution of the opportunities to save on heat. Automatic systems to control heating, based on the time of day or even on varied use of individual rooms, contributed to greater compatibility between heating economically and pursuing individual lifestyle preferences, and they enabled renters to regain part of their sovereignty over time spent in attending to the heating (heating as a "side-line activity"). The introduction of the supposedly more precise electronic heating meter, appeared to eliminate most of the inequity in consumption based billing under the less favorable conditions presented by old buildings.
To reiterate, however, these improvements in heating and ventilation technology and infrastructures only partially eliminated problems of cultural incompatibility. The drastic fall in energy prices in the mid-1980s let the technology development—particu
larly further advancements in heating meter technology--be stuck to the wayside. Even
the attempt by the law-makers to compensate the loss of economic legitimation by appealing to good ecological reasons ("a clean environment") was here of no avail.
How future development of consumption based heating calculation might look when energy prices rise again is best reflected in the centralized ("long-distance") energy consumption measurement systems that have thus far only been in limited use. Such systems would first of all establish an important precondition for harmonizing home decor and lifestyle preferences with ways to save energy. Unlike ordinary heating meters, the new meterscan in fact "measure" directly the actual heat consumption of individual households. Computerized systems can even obtain informations for a parti
cular tenant for specific periods of time and specific rooms. Only with a relatively well-differentiated self-check system for energy consumption do renters have a realis
tic chance to develop clever ways to heat economically (that is, to develop a system of heating and ventilation based upon actual use, whereby heating comfort is not impaired). And, moreover, only with the aid of heating control can renters heat eco
nomically on a continual basis. To this extent, we are no longer talking about the sim
ple heating meter; rather, we are referring to combined systems for recording use and controlling consumption. Finally, these advanced systems also hold the promise of contributing something to protection of the private sphere and to "fairness in energy saving". External data recording devices make it possible to do long-distance meter reading, thus making house visits by a meter reader unnecessary. Heat sensor-trans
mitters make it possible, for the first time, to stop the practice of "stealing" heat as a method of energy conservation~a practice which inevitably grew with the improved external insulation apartments.
The Washing Spiral
The perhaps most convincing examples in support of the technology-culture spiral thesis can be found if we use it to interpret the development in washing clothes (for more details see Braun, 1988). The development from the old Kesselwäsche (an assembly of laundry room apparatuses for heating wash water, washing, and wringing in separate steps) to modern-day component washing machines can be traced as fol
lows.
Up to the mid- 1960s in Germany, the first variants of the non-automatic drum wash
ing machine were systematically pushing the Kesselwäsche devices out of laundry rooms. With the advent of drum washing machines, it became possible to unite the well-established standards of cleanliness in clothing with the demands typical of the
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time (the so-called "era of the kidney-shaped table") for freedom of expression in home decor and privatization demands. With the drum washing machine, individual households had, for the first time, an operable washing appliance that was affordable by a larger number of households and that could be accommodated in apartments from the standpoint of size and weight. In addition, the stricter standards of cleanliness in the apartment (as compared to the old laundry room) could now be met with launder
ing clothes because the wash water was heated electrically rather than with coal heating as in the past.
The privatization function of the washing machine developed stepwise in the period following its initial introduction. The first drum washing machines only shifted the activity of washing from the community laundry room into the apartment. The wring
ing and drying functions of textile care were eventually shifted from the "public" laun
dry rooms to the private sphere of the apartment with the first external spin-dryers, later integrated into the washing machines, and later on with the first external auto
matic dryers, also subsequently integrated into today's fully automatic washer-dryer.
Even the "domestication" of the washing machine had a continued development of its own. The drum washing machine was originally banished to the "wet room" of the home, the bathroom. With the increasing encapsulation of its functional mechanisms which had an impact on living space environment, and with its decreasing size, the washing machine eventually moved from the bathroom into the kitchen. By the 1980s, with the development of the "built-in appliance", the modem variant of the washing machine, aesthetically designed for the fully-fitted kitchen, was transformed more and more into a kitchen-cum-livingroom piece of furniture.
Between 1965 and 1975 washing machine technology development was directed towards linear increases in mechanical performance. The first drum washing machine, requiring a relatively high user input for operation, eventually developed into the par
tially automatic, then into the fully automatic washer with spin-dry cycle. This meant that the cost and time needed to wash one kilogram of laundry could be drastically reduced and, at the same time, that the performance of the washing machine could be noticeably improved.
The spread of the fully automatic washers, which appeared to give households unlim
ited capacities for disposing of dirty laundry, created more time and cost economies to indulge in fashion dependent attire, and for leisure dependent reorganization of gar
ment care in general. Conversely, with the establishment of fashion dependent dress, the level of laundry increased (in terms of the amount of dirty laundry per person and
in terms of the multiplicity of fabric types to be washed.) The whole procedure of garment and textile care began to change in that aesthetic considerations in washing to overtake hygienic ones. For instance, clothing that didn't "look clean" according to the new aesthetic standards was considered "dirty". At the same time that higher standards of "clean" began to take over, demands increased for more free use of time. This was a development in everyday life that paralleled changes in the working world, character
ized by the increasing importance attached to the so-called leisure society and by the expansion of activities outside the vocational sphere beyond the limited sphere of home and hearth. Accordingly, washing technology not only had to contribute to more free time where housework was concerned, but also to a greater choice in the way this free time could be used (best expressed in the idea of "doing the washing on the side").
The demands on machine washing related to new behavior in dress and free disposal of time were, for the most part, incompatible. Up to the mid-1980s these demands touched most upon a number of qualitative functional developments in washing rang
ing from machine washable textiles—wrinkle-free, easy care, color-fast, boil-fast—over corresponding developments in washing machine detergents and additives to advance
ments in washing machine technology. The new washing machine technology, in par
ticular the new wide-ranging washing cycle programs, made it possible to accommo
date the large variety of available textiles and corresponding variations in textile care and, at the same time, to gain a fair amount of flexibility in the use of time (e.g., through "short cycles" and program timers).
In the course of the 1980s, laundry care began to become more and more the focal point in public debates over ecology in the household. The criticism and suggested reforms began to call into doubt all the supposed achievements in laundry care up to that point. Even today, washing that is substantially less harmful to the environment can only be achieved at the cost of more cutbacks elsewhere—in particular, cutbacks in our high standards of cleanliness, living quality, dress habits, free disposal of time (flexibility) and private sphere protection, all of which modem washing technology has made possible. Nevertheless, the ecological assessment regarding laundry care was relatively rapidly accepted by the consumer. The main reason for this was that the new ecological standards imposed on laundry care (in contrast, for instance, to those for heating) could be made culturally acceptable with relative ease, simply by stretching the cleanliness semantics a bit to include the environment ("we want clean clothes and a clean environment"). To all of those wonderful new aspects of modem washing
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technology—privatization, domestication, fashionization, etc.—could be added
"ecologization".
Many ecological reforms were incorporated into machine washing after 1985 in order to better accommodate generally incompatible demands stemming from highly differ
entiated standards of cleanliness and culturally new, adopted standards for environ
mental harmlessness. The ecological reforms included, among many things, introduc
tion of the so-called eco-detergents (ranging from phosphate-free, over the rediscov
ered soap based laundry cleaners and ecologically harmless additives, to the new com
ponent detergents) and the new eco-washing machines (ranging from appliances with eco- ("short") cycles, over appliances with the so-called energy-save, low-water level options to the modern-day component washing machine, a kind of mini-chemical fac
tory).
The development of the component washing machine can be seen as the (preliminary) final attempt to resolve the apparent problem of "clean laundry, polluted environment"
through hi-tech innovations in washing machine technology. Sensory technology, dia
logue programming, automatic detergent dispensing, and computer controlled water, energy and detergent levels are all designed to free the consumer from the extra tasks associated with ecologically benign washing and, at the same time, to offer the con
sumer individually adapted, "infinitely variable" options for optimal compromise between environmental protection, cleanliness, comfort, and aesthetic dress.
3. Multi-Functionalization and Multi-Culturalization
If we view both sides of the spiral dynamic separately, in terms of its technical aspects and its cultural aspects, respectively (for each of the three examples from everyday life described above), then the following picture emerges.
Characteristic for the technical side of the spiral dynamic is fluctuation in the stock of everyday appliances. This means, for a given general area of activity, that the number of appliances required for specific tasks will vary up and down. In each individual area of activity, a specific technology is introduced (e.g., the drum washing machine). Its limited performance profile will be increased gradually through the introduction of auxiliary appliances and additional aids (e.g., spin-dryers, automatic dryers, various
"improved" detergents and additives), meaning that the number of appliances in this area initially increases. Then, however, the trend begins to reverse: the tendency is to systematically integrate all of the various appliances and aids stepwise (e.g., all-tem-
perature, suitable-for-all-fabrics detergents; fully automatic washer-dryer combinations and component washing machines), and the number of appliances therefore drops.
This fluctuation represents a kind of purging process that literally creates new space for more advanced, refined technology in the everyday sphere.
Because the everyday sphere has an upper limit in its capacity to absorb technical appliances, there is a tendency towards multifimctionalization of the appliances in use at a given time and towards compaction of the activities dependent upon those appli
ances. Thus, it appears that progressive technization in everyday life is not necessarily directed towards more appliances, but rather towards more technology in appliances.
Likewise, technical activity structures in everyday life become fewer, but therefore more complex. Multifunctionalization of appliances will be spurred usually by a desire for functional synergy, initially directed at conserving time and space in such a way that more clever, refined variants can then be developed for achieving more individu
ality in appliance functions.
Characteristic of cultural development within our three areas of everyday life technol
ogy-analogous to a fluctuating stock of appliances—is varying cohesion among current standard cultural practices. There are comparatively harmonious periods of development in which traditional cultural practices become more differentiated (through exploitation of the entire range of activities in everyday washing, heating, and sexual relations), and then linked to other practices in bordering areas of eveiyday life (e.g., leisure, living, preventive health care). These harmonious periods alternate with periods of relative turmoil where influences from outside the sphere of everyday life (e.g., the ecology debate, the energy conservation issue, the family planning contro
versy) generate much incompatibility in cultural practices.
The linking together of closely related cultural practices and the elimination of incompatibilities are achieved essentially by interpretative stretching of the standard semantics for the given area of everyday activity under consideration—in our case, washing, heating, and sexual relations in everyday life. For instance, in the case of washing, the traditional cleanliness semantics are extended to apply to the notion of aesthetic appearance of clothing; in the case of heating, the traditional fairness seman
tics have been expanded to include "fair" chances for saving energy; in everyday sex
ual relations, the semantics of prevention are extended to include the notion of pre
vention of health hazards. By stretching semantics in this way, previously unlinked cultural behavioral standards become the resources for further cultural differentiation in each given area of activity. There appear to be no recognizable upper limits to the
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