A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

The Constitutional System

The institutional framework that nurtured the liberal culture and its zeal for the new – and which was in turn reinforced by that culture – was set in place by the Constitution. The founders of the US polity divided governmental power horizontally and vertically, and diluted it by establishing individual rights against the State. These constraints on the federal government fostered political and economic competition that was often expressed in technological form.

The states within the Union competed for business from the start, subsidizing turnpikes and canals and, before long, steamboats and railroads. The federal government was precluded from investing in such “internal improvements” in the antebellum period. For instance, although Congress briefly supported Samuel Morse’s research on the telegraph in the 1840s, it declined an opportunity to acquire and develop the finished invention. The lack of central direction and coordination made for chaos and duplication in the new technologies of transportation and communication, but also sped their deployment and diffusion as alternative approaches were tried out by entrepreneurs and their backers at the state level.

The Civil War removed some constraints on the federal government, as evidenced in 1862 by the beginnings of a unique partnership with the states to create “colleges for the benefit of agriculture and mechanic arts.” Building on a tradition of widespread, locally governed public education, the “A&Ms” ...