The Control Revolution

326 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE sometimes seem to play the same role in intra-RCA rivalries that the Soviets do in contests among AEC laboratories. What is more inter­ esting, however, is that attention to the consumer side fills in our picture of U.S. high technology and that Graham’s delineation of the relations among RCA’s managers and divisions suggests research di­ rections worth carrying over into studies of government R&D. Graham elected to let chapters 4—10 go mainly unfootnoted on the assumption that RCA documents would not be accessible to other historians. She has deposited at the archives of the Baker Library at Harvard Business School an index to the company materials, a few ofthe documents themselves, her set ofinterview tapes (some ofwhich are restricted), and two long manuscripts, also unfootnoted but full of technical and organizational details that complement the book. Joan Bromberg Dr. Bromberg is writing a book on laser and maser R&D in the United States from 1950 to 1970. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Infor­ mation Society. By James R. Beniger. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Pp. x + 493; illustrations, tables, bibliog­ raphy, index. $25.00. James R. Beniger has written a major synthesis of the history and origins of the information society. Drawing on hundreds of studies in business history, social science, and the history of technology, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society joins a growing body of research in the history of information technology and computers. Beniger challenges the popular position that the information society emerged with recent developments in computer and telecommunications technologies by arguing that the information society was an outgrowth of a “crisis of control” spawned by the Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century. The sociological tradition of structural functionalism provides the framework for Beniger’s analysis. For structural functionalists, the central “problem” for complex societies is one of “integration,” “the growing need for coordination of functions that accompanies differ­ entiation and specialization in any system” (p. 11). In The Control Revolution, national economies are understood as material-processing systems engaged in the functions of extraction, reorganization, and distribution of environmental inputs for the purpose of final con­ sumption. Information processing plays a pivotal role in material­ processing systems. Just as is the case with “living systems,” a society’s methods for communicating and processing information provide the central mechanisms for maintaining order. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 327 Beniger argues that up until the last century, economic functions were carried out essentially at a human pace and individual workers were able to provide the necessary information processing to integrate the production, distribution, and consumption of goods. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the acceleration of society’s material­ processing system precipitated a crisis of control: the techniques for information processing and communication were no longer capable of integrating the economic functions of society. The problem first emerged in the railroads as a “safety crisis,” fol­ lowed by the railroads’ continuing difficulties controlling their vast systems. It then spread to distribution, where the proliferating net­ works of grain elevators and warehouses precipitated problems with control over the growing commerce in grain. Simultaneously, the crisis emerged in the sphere of production where the rail, iron, copper, zinc, and glass manufacturers struggled to control the increasing pace of production. Finally, in the 1880s, it reached the arena of con­ sumption where firms that adopted continuous-processing technol­ ogies confronted the necessity to stimulate consumption, differentiate products, and build brand loyalty. Resolution of the crisis necessitated radical new means of infor­ mation and communication processing, in short, a control revolution. At the center of the innovations that emerged to contain the crisis were formal bureaucracies—impersonal structures that processed in­ formation according to a predetermined set of rules. The centrali­ zation of bureaucracy, together with technological innovations such as refrigerated railcars, resolved the crisis of control in transportation. Innovations designed to facilitate the flow of inputs and outputs— such as interchangeable parts and continuous-processing technolo­ gies—alleviated the problem in production. Innovations such as the telegraph, the telephone, and the postal system provided solutions in distribution. And developments such

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