Focus: The Trap of Neutrality and Kranzberg's Laws

Kranzberg's laws are a classic approach to the history of technology rooted in specific mores of the mid-twentieth-century United States. This essay updates them for the early twenty-first century, discussing how changes in technological systems, and in the United States itself, have surfaced different concerns and possible new "laws." It argues that the trap of viewing technological systems as though they might be neutral-or at least more flexible than they are-is of primary concern today, not only for scholars of the history of technology but also for technology workers and users.