Technology can advance and enable societal changes in many ways. The successful inventors Henry Ford and Thomas Edison are two examples of individuals who transformed society with their technological breakthroughs. Michael Brian Schiffer, the Fred A. Riecker Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, writes about how technological failures can also help researchers to better understand how and why technology changes and affects society.
Schiffer tries to understand why some technological efforts succeed and others result in what he calls “spectacular flops.” Do all of these projects have certain things in common that make them more likely to fail? Schiffer certainly thinks so. He has assembled a list of twelve technological initiatives, beginning with Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot's attempt to create a steam-powered automobile in the late seventeenth century, and concludes with the modern-day attempt to create a cold fusion reaction. In each of the twelve examples, Schiffer carefully examines the reasons behind the failure. These reasons read like a veritable seven deadly sins excerpt from the bible: dishonesty, greed, hubris, and jealousy, among others, all contribute to why technological initiatives fail.
Chapter 7, which examines Nikola Tesla's World System, provides an excellent picture of how Tesla's character defects contributed to the project's ultimate failure. The World System was supposed to provide wireless transmission of electricity, thus revolutionizing the distribution of power. Tesla was never able to drive his project to a successful conclusion; the technology itself was not feasible. However, Tesla's single-minded determination, coupled with his formidable reputation, prevented him from understanding and accepting the fact that his idea was not going to work. Schiffer ingeniously links Tesla with Guglielmo Marconi, demonstrating that Tesla could easily have modified the World System from a power distribution system into one that enabled wireless data transmission. Yet Tesla was totally unwilling—owing to his overconfidence, hubris, and belief in his own infallibility—to recognize that his ideas were not feasible. This prevented him from contemplating the alteration of his ideas into something else that would be workable and, in fact, revolutionary. Marconi was quick to capitalize on Tesla's inaction, and history records his success with wireless technologies.
The reader of this work will no doubt greatly benefit from Schiffer's voluminous knowledge regarding electrical and mechanical devices. Through excellent illustrations and careful, explanatory text, Schiffer succeeds in describing the intricacies of steam engines, jet turbines, and nuclear power (in addition to other technologies). A good example of Schiffer's ability to explain complex concepts is found in chapter 5, titled “Audacious Engineer: Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the Great Eastern Steamship.” The chapter focuses on the early 1830s, before steamships were designed to cross the oceans. Brunel was a victim of many of the vices described earlier. He was overconfident and greedy. Brunel enjoyed design and engineering success building bridges and tunnels for early railways in Britain. Exceedingly confident as a result of his accomplishments, Brunel attempted in 1835 to build a massive steamship meant to cross the Atlantic. At that time, no ship had ever made the crossing using entirely steam power. Here, the author's knowledge of the engineering hurdles Brunel needed to overcome makes for very compelling reading. Schiffer takes into account coal requirements, buoyancy factors, and many other facets of the ship's design, allowing for a nontechnical reader to fully understand why Brunel's attempt failed.
In all of the chapters in this book, Schiffer does an outstanding job explaining the technology to the layperson reader. Readers who enjoy learning about the history of technology initiatives will thoroughly enjoy Spectacular Flops. Schiffer's choices of the different technological failures are particularly well thought out, described, and chosen. Readers of technology histories will be rewarded by learning about less commonly examined technologies that they might never have discovered. The book would have benefited from linking subsequent technological successes based on the highlighted failed efforts. In chapter 6, for example, regarding the French initiative to build the Panama Canal, Schiffer identifies the endemic problem of tropical diseases and correctly recognizes the high mortality rate suffered by the workers; he neglects to mention the fact that the American effort that succeeded the French failure concentrated on mosquito eradication prior to commencing any actual excavation work. The flops Schiffer documents so vividly are a normal part of technological developments. It would have been helpful if he linked the losers to a greater effort in technological achievements. The failures Schiffer describes often paved the way for new innovations that shaped society. It would have been helpful if he had explicitly made that link in the text.
