Efficiency is one of those slippery, elusive concepts with a mixed
pedigree. To the engineer, it represents a calculable ratio of energy
input and output. To the general public, it's a word overlaid with
vaguely positive overtones that can be used to describe anything
from a gas-saving automobile to the efficacy of an office receptionist.
To Jennifer Alexander, assistant professor of mechanical engineering,
efficiency is a concept so fascinating that she's made it a major
focus of her research.
She began researching the concept of efficiency when she was a
doctoral student in history of science at the University of Washington.
“I wanted a 'big topic,'” she says. “In history of science, people
have studied things like the lives of famous scientists of the past
or the construction of famous bridges. But I was interested in industrial
culture, the relationship between technical culture and social culture."
Alexander, who received her Ph.D. in 1996 and joined the mechanical
engineering department last year, traces the evolution of the idea
of efficiency. Efficiency was one of the four Aristotelian philosophical
concepts undergirding medieval science. To the medieval mind, an
“efficient cause” was one that achieved results. “Medieval thinkers
talked about the 'efficiency' of God as prime mover of the universe,”
she says.
With the onset of the Industrial Age, efficiency developed a new
meaning, that of a quantifiable measure of technical success. Although
now defined as a specific mathematical ratio, efficiency still retained
a certain moral dimension. An efficient 19th-century steam engine
was not only a technological success but also a triumph of right-thinking
and a manifestation of progress. People even referred to the steam
engine as having a “duty” to perform its work.
Alexander refers to efficiency as a tenet of the “orthodoxy of
technology” that emerged in the 19th century. “We lost the great
orthodoxies of religion,” she says, “but we have retained the orthodoxies
of technology and progress."
Efficiency has a social as well as a technical dimension. During
the Progressive Era in U.S. history, efficiency was part cultural
fad, part technological ideal. Its advocates believed that efficiency
would sweep through early 20th-century society like a great cleansing
wave, washing away the outmoded and unproductive, replacing them
with scientific systemization and rationalization.
The efficiency expert reigned supreme over all human activity.
Even relationships and matters of the human heart were filtered
through the lens of efficiency. Time and motion studies assumed
a kind of cult-like status, with the efficiency expert acting as
high priest.
Alexander has unearthed some amusing examples that
show how scientific efficiency was carried to extremes.
She's documented in detail the fascinating career of
an early, self-taught efficiency expert named Edward
Purinton. Never one to forego an inflated claim, Purinton
declared that efficiency was the key to human self-governance
and happiness, not just a matter of saving time or money.
About 1914, Purinton described efficiency as “the re-education
and reconstruction of men. [It is] the power of doing
one's most and best, in the shortest time and easiest
way."
Purinton devoted himself to such projects as calculating mathematically
the most efficient rate of chewing one's food and quantifying the
benefits of a happy marriage or a good relationship with the boss.
He even wrote a self-help column for a popular magazine as a forum
for his ideas. Purinton applied the principles of efficiency to
such pressing reader queries as how to avoid a mental breakdown
and whether or not parents were responsible for the ethical decisions
of their adult children. In his column Purinton advised against
the study of calculus, maintaining, as Alexander puts it, “that
calculus was beyond the pale of the person seeking efficiency."
What's so fascinating about Purinton's overzealous appropriation
of efficiency is not what he did, but rather that so many ordinary
people took him seriously. However, early 20th-century worship of
efficiency was just one of many technological concepts that have
been enthusiastically (and not always rationally) adapted to social
purposes.
“There have been lots of infatuations with technology,” says Alexander.
“Right now we hear about the information economy and the need for
the 'free flow of information.' There's glamour [associated with
it], but in common statements like 'information needs to be free,'
you hear a moral dimension as well."
Alexander points out that people equate the exchange of information
to the value-laden notion of freedom, just as Purinton confused
chewing efficiency with the liberation of human potential.
The 20th century also witnessed a hideous perversion of efficiency.
Germany was one of the countries most influenced by the efficiency
movement, and the German desire to quantify industrial mechanisms
contributed to a horrifying chapter in the history of technology.
"There were actual measurements made of the fuel efficiencies involved
in burning bodies at Auschwitz,” says Alexander. “At the time, German
research in kinesiology was more advanced that that of other countries.
During World War II, at the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute,
scientists used those principles to advise concentration camp administrators
how to use slave labor most efficiently."
In fairness, Alexander adds, scientific research should not necessarily
be condemned because of the terrible ways in which it's
sometimes applied. The same study of biomechanics that
led to a more efficient exploitation of concentration
camp victims also generated such body awareness movements
as ergonomics and Pilates exercises, which were developed
by German åemigresås to the U.S.
Nevertheless, she asks, “How could such an advanced nation descend
to the barbarities of World War II? At the beginning of the 20th
century, Germany was [considered] one of the most highly industrialized,
highly civilized countries in the world. Because a country was economically
advanced, [we assumed it was] culturally advanced as well. We like
to twin those ideas, but they don't necessarily go together."
In her personal life, Alexander has a somewhat complicated relationship
with the notion of efficiency. Although she has no physical disability,
a physical therapist once told her that she had an “extremely inefficient
gait.” Although the diagnosis itself was straightforward, Alexander
was sensitive to the therapist's choice of words. The therapist
had an intuitive grasp of her situation but used the vocabulary
of efficiency.
"My feet deviated [from the norm], but they could become 'efficient.'
It shows that the concept of efficiency had a kind of moral force,”
says Alexander. “Things should be efficient, and when they're not,
they're wrong. It's about deviance and normality. What's 'normal'
is efficient."
Despite her revealing semantic analysis of the encounter, Alexander
chose to wear corrective devices in her shoes. She regards her orthotics
as a metaphor for the tension between the demands of efficiency
and the needs of individuals.
"I personally don't like being told what to do, but I wear devices
that limit my options and force my feet to go in a certain way so
my feet can't wobble,” she says. “I think of efficiency as being
forced to follow a certain path. We may not like it, but it works.
And that's the puzzling part."
Alexander is one of several science historians among IT faculty.
She says that historians like herself have sometimes been referred
to as “the jewel in the IT crown,” a source of pride for the science
and engineering departments. It's not an expression she likes, because
it marginalizes her position as a historian in a department associated
with pragmatic research.
Although the transition from a humanities environment to a “hard
science” department like mechanical engineering was
a challenge, Alexander says she was probably better prepared
for the change than most historians. As an undergraduate
at the University of Wyoming, she was interested in computer
science and math—until she encountered history. “History
was so . . . vast,” she says. She received bachelor's
and master's degrees in history from Wyoming before beginning
her doctoral studies.
Married to an engineer, Alexander cites an example from her personal
life to show how the language of technology can mean different things,
depending on whether the speaker is an engineer or a historian.
"Sometimes, I find [the contrast in our thinking] puzzling,” she
says. “When I say that efficiency is historical, to me that means
the definition is both the product of a particular time and place
and that the definition is open to change in the future. My husband,
on the other hand, thinks, 'Sure, it's historical. [That means]
people talked about it 50 years ago.' Some of my colleagues might
feel the same way."
Alexander recalls the shock of her first encounter with undergraduate
students whose awareness of history's nuances had yet to be awakened.
Alexander laughs as she remembers the first meeting of her course
in Technology and Western Civilization, when she faced a sea of
uncommunicative young men, most of them engineering and computer
science students.
"They wanted to hear about guns!” she says. “Steam engines were
okay, but what they really wanted to hear about was guns. What they
didn't want to hear about, for example, was the systematic exclusion
of women from public life that took place during the Industrial
Revolution. At first, I had to wham them over the heads with the
violent origins of the Industrial Age.”
Fortunately, Alexander reports, things have improved considerably
for both teacher and students since that first meeting.
As she becomes more adept at bridging the occasional communication
gap, Alexander is determined to bring historical and philosophical
perspectives to the attention of her colleagues and students.
"Efficiency is a luxury,” she says. “You have to be in a position
of authority to develop it and in a position of wealth to employ
it. You can be effective without being efficient, but efficiency
is more elegant. Efficiency was also used as a tool of social management,
but I'm not sure we all need to be so well-managed."
But what about the scientist or engineer who believes that such
speculation is interesting but not really relevant to the problems
of mechanical engineering?
"I think about this a lot,” says Alexander. “I respond that you
ought to be conscious of [all aspects of] what you're doing. It's
ignorant to restrict oneself to one's own experience. There are
many forms of knowledge."
