Introduction

The Age of Crisis had left behind shocking devastations and atrocities. Nations, cities, businesses, and families were in ruins. Society, enterprise, and users faced tremendous challenges; again, many saw technology as the key to solutions. And many asked the questions that we ask today: This time, how do we realize technology's promises without incurring disaster? The question was especially urgent in the years and decades after the Second World War. With the resurfacing of nationalism and the emergence of the Cold War, people feared a Third World War, and they believed it would be a nuclear one.

Before the Second World War, in the 1930s, early advocates of technocracy had suggested that experts take charge. Politicians and commercial managers had steered technology towards war, worker exploitation, and the crash of the world economy, they argued. Engineers, architects, scientists, planners, and other professionals would do better. Neither ideology, nor power struggles, nor profit-making would take the lead; objective scientific methods would steer the process of defining problems, analyzing those problems, and innovating. Experts would set the innovation agenda. And experts would address social problems as engineering challenges. Using the available resources, experts would make optimal choices for society, enterprise, and users. This would steer technology towards a better future.

After the war, governments, businesses, and citizens gave experts that mandate to take responsibility. Now, experts addressed major social challenges as engineering problems, and experts became more influential than ever in setting the innovation agenda. We distinguish two main features of this technocratic approach.

First, experts gained more control over the innovation agenda by asserting the primacy of “basic” research—research that was untainted by either political or commercial priorities. The report quoted at the beginning of this chapter exemplifies that approach to innovation.