Henderson shows how drawing by hand is the way engineers communicate with each other and with others central to the manufacturing process. Her rich data and careful analysis illumine the problems that the shift to computer drafting have created for modern industry so make a major contribution to understanding contemporary technology.
Howard S. Becker, Department of Sociology, University of Washington
At a time when breathless rhetorics of the virtual abound, Kathryn Henderson provides us with a thoughtful investigation of the particularities of mixed practices across electronic and paper media. Skillfully locating her analysis in recent theorizing within science and technology studies, Henderson writes with a clarity that will make On Line and On Paper a resource not only for scholars of technoscience, new media technologies, and labor history but for engineering educators and reflective practitioners as well.
Lucy Suchman, Work Practice & Technology Group, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Opening up the black box of 'design,' Henderson lays bare processes of visualization. How do engineers see the not-yet-made, and how do they communicate their visions with pixels and pencils? This book is invasive in the best sense of the word: It investigates how visual representations become something more than private cogitation, and how they are grounded in machine-mediated cultures and organizational agendas. A vital contribution to the budding sociology of machines.
Tom Gieryn, Professor of Sociology, Indiana University
Henderson makes a solid contribution to a small but growing collection of fine-scaled studies of engineers at work, probing and revealing the richness of the craft. She convincingly argues for a deeper interpretation of the formal as well as informal visual image, showing how they act as 'conscription devices', around and upon which managers, subcontractors, engineers—all active participants in design—negotiate dimensions, parts lists, and their professional identities. Now that drafting is no longer a requirement, this might well serve the undergraduate engineer as preparation for professional practice.
Louis L. Bucciarelli, School of Engineering, MIT
Kathryn Henderson captures the life-world of design and its vicissitudes in wonderful case studies.
Arie Rip, Science, Technology and Society, University of Twente, The Netherlands
