Page 26 - 捷運技術 第48期

22 黃令名 通往「現代」之後？—臺灣捷運人的誕生及其未來

Advancing Past “Modern”?-The Birth of the Taiwanese
Metro-men and Its Future

Ling-Ming Huang 1

Abstract

This essay is based on my Master’s thesis, “The Awkward Rail to ‘Modern’: The History of
the Development of Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) and MRT Technology as forms of Life.”

I construct and analyze the history of the early stage of Taipei MRT in Science, Technology and
Society (STS) from a technology as forms of life viewpoint, explaining how I developed the
concept of “Metro-men” and how Metro-men were formed in Taiwan. In the beginning, Taiwanese

Metro-men gathering in DORTS, Taipei City Government had the ambition of modernization. Their
ambition was to change Taipei City and even all of Taiwanese society into a modern urban culture
and society by constructing a new MRT system. By learning how to build an MRT system with
consultants from other countries, they changed themselves: they learned how to plan a complex
system in a systematic way and to work with great precision.

However, Taiwanese Metro-men had a constrained ability to define what modernization is
and its possibilities in the development of Taipei MRT because MRT is always closely connected
with citizens' life and the situation of politics and economics. Moreover, Taiwanese Metro-men

lacked key techniques and knowledge of MRT construction in the beginning period and were in a
weak political position especially when Taiwan was going through a special social situation in the
1980s. Therefore, they often constructed Taipei MRT under constrained conditions, but they still
completed some engineering and institutional innovations and satisfied their ambition, although in
an awkward way. Finally, I try to suggest Participation, Culture, and Diffusion as three dimensions

of a possible future direction for development of Taiwan's MRT as a way of life.

Keywords: Science, Technology and Society (STS), Metro-men, Taipei MRT, technology as

forms of life