Wednesday November 5 – Scholars rarely sin by commission, by deliberate cheating the evidence
Lots going on these days in Motown. For the country, mid-term elections playing out as the half-century after Cold War’s simplicities is only half over; a country roiled and contentious about changes that defy simple answers. For the city — and my university in it — what looks to be the conclusion of a most improbable Detroit bankruptcy exit plan fresh with innovation and hope in the teeth of a half century of wounds inflicted by technological changes with its array of innovators, profit takers, an sometimes ruthless banging on the bottom 80%.
For me these days bring a lifetime of history-of-technology soul friends — some age peers, some way younger — gathering for this year’s Annual Meeting of The Society for the History of Technology. That begins tomorrow. I’ve offered a 6 hour drive-around tour which we are calling “Detroit Ruins Clichés and Detroit Rebirth.” I’ve promised places in bad trouble, where some of the city’s c. 75,000 decayed buildings are, and places of rebirth. We will pick up lunch at the Russell Street Deli in Eastern Market and eat it on Belle Isle. Things like that.
Then we have Friday afternoon’s public announcement of Judge Stephen Rhode’s verdict on Detroit’s exit plan. That looks more important for the US in the long haul than this morning’s US election results. One hears tales of other cities under water with pension debts — Chicago, Philadelphia, the State of California . . . . “How did Detroit pull this off?” If you haven’t seen Columnist Dan Howes Oct 17 one-page read on what’s happened here, you maybe should, to help understand the significance of Judge Rhodes announcement this Friday.
Finally, for us historians of technology, this is also the first annual meeting ever when Tom Hughes — mentor to me and many of us — no longer walks the earth.
Too much to encompass here. I will just celebrate the beauty of what scholars do when they ask demanding questions of the human condition, the beauty of thousands of women and men who have imagined and negotiated Detroit’s shocking, creative plan for rebirth, the beauty of students on campus facing the challenges that their teachers, beautiful too, place in front of them; the beauty of Tom Hughes who did that for me.
Have a good day. Supposed to be rainy during my 6 hour tour tomorrow so I’m making the best of the sunshine now.
Today’s Post
“When you listen to someone and it is evident that your listening is helping them at a deep level;
you have an immediately satisfying experience. It is a good thing you do when you listen to one person. However,
scholarship is not like that;
you work a long time not knowing whether what you are working on will be any good or very important, not until long after.
***************
Historians do not ordinarily sin by commission,
by using fraudulent evidence or shoddy arguments.
Mostly historians sin by omission,
by the questions they do not explore and the evidence they do not look for.”
Tom Hughes
to me as a graduate student, c. 1976,
arguing that I might choose to invest myself in the history of technology as a profession
