Like many other historians of American technology in the 1990s, Ruth Schwartz Cowan argues in
A Social History of American Technology that the American technological experience is unique, shaped by a range of factors including geography and cultural diversity. Cowan emphasizes that the
social history of technology (SHOT) involves "integrating the history of technology with the rest of human history," and accordingly she integrates familiar SHOT topics like invention, the American system of manufacturing, technological systems, scientific management, electrification, automobility, flight, and biotechnology with histories of business, economics, and the environment. She also incorporates groups previously overlooked by SHOT folks, including housewives, engineers, scientists, and people of color (including Native Americans.) She handles all of these different elements by using case studies rather than grand narratives; the result is a series of deep contextualizations of historical technological development.
