Technological Trajectories, Cultural Values and the Labour Process: The Development of NC Machinery in the Norwegian Shipbuilding Industry

Abstract

This paper deals with the shaping of a particular technology (numerically controlled devices, `NC') in two different contexts. It compares the development of NC technology at MIT (with funding from the US Air Force), with the development of an NC steering unit, and later computer programs, in a public research institution in Norway, with grants for doing industrial research. Different institutional settings, different funding, and different traditions, make the two research communities raise different questions, and find different solutions, involving different sets of actors. While the US project had to be broken down, in order to make it usable in industry, the Norwegian project was built up by adding bits all the time, involving new actors and new types of funding. The question of `deskilling' is then discussed against a background of different cultures.