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In his 1985 presidential address to the Society for the History of Technology, Melvin Kranzberg, the society's founder and editor of Technology and Culture for its first twenty-one years, said: "We are faced with public decisions regarding global strategy, environmental concerns, educational directions, and the ratio of resources to the world's burgeoning populations. Technological history can cast light on the many parameters of these very specific problems confronting us now and in the future—and that is why I say that the history of technology is more relevant than other histories."

Events repeatedly underscore the inescapable truth that technology intersects endlessly with every other aspect of our everyday lives, and there is no more fruitful way of understanding and analyzing these intersections than putting them in historical context. We need to grasp, for example, how the scale and scope of the devastation visited on the Gulf Coast by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita related to the complex technological systems—levees, floodwalls, pumps, canals—that simultaneously underpin and undermine its cities and industries. We need to perceive how the technological features of the oil/auto complex condition our politics. We should be attuned to the echoes of technological choices that help shape of our environment, both natural and human made.

In that 1985 speech Kranzberg coined a set of historical "laws," the first of which—"technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral"—applies equally to all the myriad technologies of modern life, from nanotechnology to bioengineering, information systems, industrialized agriculture, energy, transportation networks, and beyond. Technological history cuts a swath across science, engineering, law, philosophy, ethics, and politics, to touch on the concerns of citizens of all sorts.

Technology and Culture is a scholarly journal, and every issue features articles that bring intensive research to bear on an explicit and tightly focused thesis. But from its beginning fifty years ago, T&C has made a place for essays and comments that explore the intersections of technology with current social and political concerns. Then, it provided a venue for such public intellectuals as Lewis Mumford, Peter Drucker, and Jacques Ellul; more recently it has become a forum for scholars and techological practitioners who seek to raise our consciousness about issues such as energy and the environment, the politicization of public display, conspicuous consumption, and the culture of risk.

In the past few years, the editors have placed more emphasis on such general-interest essays and comments. Beginning with the January 2006 issue, we will publish selections from the current issue online here, freely accessible, linked to a variety of resources available over the web—ranging from back issues of T&C and similar journals to, e.g., online exhibits, maps, conference and workshop proceedings, and primary source materials. These essays will remain online here for approximately as long as the issue in which they appear remains current; afterward they will naturally still be available in back issues through the journal's electronic edition in Project Muse.