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Passing the Baton

A historian maps a research site, explores and seeks evidence, creates a thesis—laboring to interpret some patch of the human condition. An author historian emerges from the research to tell some audience what s/he has found. In that second moment of articulation, the author’s task is to intimately imagine readers, calling forth awareness of the kinship that connects writer and reader. At Technology and Culture, imagining the reader can be tricky because our readers come from so many different specific interests— medieval European sewage management, nano-scale probe microscopes, kitchen stoves, nonpoint source pollution, a nearly endless list. The scope of T&C’s readership calls for a second round of editing, after the referees have signed off on the originality, credibility, and substance of the core thesis. In the second round we ask authors to stretch their imaginations so that they can write both within and beyond the circle of their fellow specialists. Writing “Passing the Baton” brings to mind years of conversations with authors as we have negotiated the relationship between serious research and good writing. Sometimes imagining the readers draws out a fresh articulation, something that transcends the first achievement of a strong thesis. When that happens T&C’s core mission comes to life as a forum wherein scholars from many perspectives educate one another and one another’s core readers about questions of compelling interest. This same kind of conversation happens in T&C’s essays and reviews. When thoughtful people stretch to imagine the wide world of T&C’s readership, sometimes magical things happen. The intersection between research and writing in a scholar’s work got me thinking of how the same tension works for an editor. The editor is ultimately responsible for all the work that ensures quality on every page. But if editorial quality control parallels the scholar’s responsibility to get the