Disasters Fast and Slow: The View from the History of Technology and Science

Scott Gabriel Knowles contributes the perspective from the history of technology and science to the roundtable.  American risk society is the culmination of the long evolution of knowledge in technical realms of expertise.  Disaster experts know more than ever before about the science of hazardous environments, human behavior in disaster, and the techniques of safer development.  But this knowledge has not rendered significant disaster reductions, just the opposite.  Americans make recurrent pledges to learn from disasters—but what would such learning entail, what would be the results?  More regulation, stronger levees, retrofitted buildings?  Would we be willing to unbuild the coastlines and pour hundreds of billions into infrastructure?  Postwar American history points to these as unlikely outcomes. The fact is that disasters are today common, and are more expensive than they were a century ago.  Risk-taking (sometimes calculated, sometimes not) is central to land development, manufacturing, urbanization, and large-scale systems.  The fact is that the contemporary age of disaster reveals a continuation of, not a break, with American history.