READING THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM AS A PROSTHETIC MACHINE

Barry Lambour

Gates Mills, OH

The Interstate Highway System will be read as a prosthetic machine by examining what it does:

1. it moves people and freight rapidly from A to B, and
2. it interacts synergistically with other factors producing side effects both good and bad.

The main components of the machine will be motor vehicles and the roadway. Other elements, such as those of the machine's support apparatus, will be considered only incidentally. The stretch of highway to be considered as the artifact will be limited to I-95 between Princeton and north Philadelphia.

The reading of the Interstate Highway Machine will be accomplished by,

1. showing a selection of 35-mm slides of the machine in action, and
2. providing an outline for an ad libitum commentary by the teacher.

The objective here is to develop instructional material that a classroom teacher will find useful. A free flowing commentary will permit the teacher to use personal expertise, experience and preference, as well as to invite student participation. The procedure incorporates an ad hoc feature that encourages adjustment and modification; e.g., slides can be added or deleted, a filmstrip may be substituted for slides, etc; and any machine may be described, a factory, an airplane ... whatever. The outline specifies a rationale so that teaching/learning outcomes may be evaluated.

From its earliest beginnings, even pre-historic times, technology has stirred deep emotions and conflicts among peoples. Technology has been viewed both as the harbinger of a soon-to-be Good Life, and as the Lorelei enticing mankind to its doom. Writers and thinkers about the phenomenon of technology point to it with pride and hope even as they view it with alarm and fear. The slides will attempt to illustrate these ambivalent notions:

• the Interstate doing its thing: handling traffic
• show the pastoral vista between A and B
• show the view between A and B: the rest stop
• illustrate the scene at A/B: the suburb/inner-city
• the price paid: the trade-offs
• the developing American Dream/Nightmare

Why is technology at once so attractive and so repulsive to us? Why can't we let well enough alone? Why must we wrestle with this hate/love situation? Jerome Bruner's mock formula for the relation of potency and fate illustrates the dilemma for me. He mused that,

E = M/F

where E represents a person's (or society's) sense of effectiveness, M represents the value of outcomes which a person (or society) thinks are well under control, and F the value of outcomes which a person (or society) considers to be determined by fate. Evidently, E increases with an increase in M and a decrease in F.

The Interstate Machine generates in the human user a sense of well being through his/her control of a powerful motor vehicle and roadway, and the sense that those things which can go wrong have been reduced to a minimum by the Interstate Highway Machine. Well, almost. Matters can turn sour at A or B or points in between, and these appear to be events not under human control. Hence, the user can experience feelings of ineffectiveness embedded in those very moments when all seems to be going well.