Demolishing Distance: Technology, Mobility, and Legibility in Early 20th Century Puerto Rico

Popular theories of technological-political interaction suggest a positive linear relationship between expanding technological capabilities and expanding state capacity. Key to these theories is the (often implicit) notion that technologies can be classified on a spectrum according to their tendency to enhance or frustrate political centralization. The secular trend of linked expanding state and technological power is therefore read as a causal trajectory driven by the inevitable path of scientific discovery - or perhaps by a positive feedback cycle between centralizing states and centralizing technologies. However, many technologies are relational in their effect; outcomes at the system level depend on where a new technology is inserted into the existing structure. Indeed, policy discussions about the “dual” (military-civilian) potential of particular technologies have long indicated the flexible positional nature of technological-political interactions. In this thesis, I employ a range of computational methods to demonstrate the advantage of a more structuralist approach to this issue by testing its explanatory power against the traditional state-centric approach. The case example used is the expansion of the highway and railroad network in Puerto Rico at the beginning of the 20th century. I show that, contrary to the predictions of state-centric theories, the highway and railroad development actions of the state were focused on funneling legible forms of production to the market and curbing the political power of the local elite, even to the relative detriment of the legibility of the overall population to the state. Technolgical use was thus contextual, and its relationship with legibility was complex