Dr Keith McLoughlin’s course “Rage Against the Machine: Technology and Anti-Technology in Modern Britain” explores how people and societies have responded to technological change from the Industrial Revolution to today. The unit encourages students to question whether history is shaped more by humans or machines, examining social tensions sparked by innovations. Designed as a collaborative research experience, students contribute original ideas and even influence the syllabus through their essays and feedback.
Rage against the machine
Despite its centrality in our lives, there is remarkably little teaching on the history of technology at British universities. Technology tends to feature to varying degrees within different strands of history – gender, race, politics, etc – but hasn’t had the attention that, say, medical history, has received as a specific field. But in the age of Artificial Intelligence, automation, cloning, and other related developments, we might expect this to change and for technology to feature more prominently in the humanities.
When I was offered the chance to create my own special subject unit in 2023, I leapt at the opportunity to create a course on the history of technology. The department at Bristol is among the most innovative in the country, offering as it does courses in animal history, the polar regions, youth culture, among so many others. But the material world of technology was absent, a unit that could ask deeply relevant questions about human agency: is the history of technology about people or machines?
I decided early on to locate the unit in the British experience from the Industrial Revolution to the present. The history of technology in the UK is an underdeveloped specialism, which presents opportunities to advance genuinely original and engaging work and revise existing assumptions about the past. What I also discovered was that each technological advance was a source of social tension, from the Luddites who broke machines in the nineteenth century to the NIMBYs who hold up wind turbines and HS2 in the current century. I would like, therefore, to thank my wife and fellow historian, Dr Jennifer Farrell, for suggesting the unit title: ‘Rage against the machine: technology and anti-technology in modern Britain’. As one student admitted in the feedback:
I chose the unit because of its title.
A collaborative research endeavour
The unit is pedagogically grounded in student-centred learning approaches. I stress that, given the undeveloped nature of the field in the UK, that the unit is a collaborative research effort: w students have a genuine opportunity to advance original research and challenge the academic scholarship. Fellow historians of technology have been kind enough to supply work in draft form for my students to comment on – a rare opportunity to see how historians craft their work before publication.
Now in its third year, the unit has been enriched by students’ essays and timed assessment responses. ‘Rage’ now has a week on the gendering of domestic technology entirely informed by a captivating essay from two years ago. The weeks on Concorde and nuclear power now feature examples of outstanding third-year dissertations as seminar readings, while our week on surveillance culture is supported by an article in Epigram from a ‘Rage’ graduate who used unit frameworks to evaluate the university’s surveillance practices.
Students have greatly appreciated the opportunities for independent research and revisionism offered by the unit, as the BLUE feedback demonstrates:
‘A really unique perspective on (British) history that I wouldn’t have considered otherwise, but I also really liked how this was created as more of a platform to question broader conceptions of humans/ machines/ state in the seminars which I think could be easily lost sight of, and is also a useful skill to apply elsewhere’.
‘The breadth of case studies, taking us far beyond digital objects that we first associate with the term ‘technology’. One of the more challenging units in that it challenges assumptions, narratives and establishments’.
‘It has completely opened up my mind to a different type of history, which is now influencing my other module and my dissertation’.
Navigating a changing world
‘Rage against the machine’ is highly applicable to the outside world – a toolkit to navigate modernity, to put it more loftily. The ambition here is to apply historical knowledge to our present-day circumstances. Examples include the Anti-Vaccination League at the end of the nineteenth century – what does this suggest about longer-term scepticism towards the state when compared to the more recent MMR and covid vaccinations? What can we learn about the politicisation of technology, particularly the current buzz around ‘innovation’ when we compare it to the technological enthusiasm of the 1960s’ ‘white heat’ of the scientific revolution?
We have deduced that technology consolidates existing power dynamics in society and there is often a gap between the stated justification for a ‘grand project’ and its real underpinning: Britain’s hydrogen bomb was meant to deter to Soviet Union, but its real purpose was to recuperate British diplomatic power in the Cold War, to name but one example. This distinction between how a technology looks and its intended purpose provoked considerable discussions among the students as to the politics of material objects. As two responses remarked:
The variety of examples and how it challenges your perception on what tech is and the difference between a stated reason for tech and the underlying reason.
Technological history feels widely applicable and underutilised, helpful in informing other history and especially pertinent to the present day despite the content stretching back hundreds of years.
Reflecting on feedback and moving forward
Now in its third run as a unit, and in an expanded form, ‘Rage’ demonstrates the ever-increasing relevance of the history of technology to understanding how people interact with machines. I have acted on student feedback in different ways, from including more theoretical approaches (which students employ so fruitfully in their work) to scheduling a ‘bring a STEM friend’ workshop in where we will design a masters’ programme that combines interdisciplinary approaches and would – if enacted – be a unique postgraduate offering in the UK. I am setting up a ‘Technological Studies Reading Group’ to unite academics in different disciplines who share an interest in disparate areas related to technology, from ethics, law, policy, innovation, among others.
The runaway pace of technological change renders people unable to check its momentum. But conversations in the seminar room suggests that there is much to be done to enrich the wider public’s understanding of technological change, particularly in historical terms, which can inform more reflective conversations about progress.
