Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012 (Inside Technology)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.55 (749 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0262019442 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 344 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-10-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Rebecca Slayton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University.
Terry Sunday said A Comprehensive, Readable History of American Ballistic Missile Defense. The main reason I was interested in "Arguments That Count" is because I worked on ballistic missile defense systems for much of my aerospace engineering career. My first job out of college was as a systems engineer on the Sprint program at Martin Marietta in Orlando, Florida. Sprint was a state-of-the-art, high-performance anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) missile designed to destroy incoming Soviet Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) warheads just a few seconds before they reached their U.S. targets. Sprint did so by--wait for it. Good read Excellent review of events and people involved in the issue of missile defense from long past history. While the emphasis is on "software" as a major driver -- in my opinion this may be a little skewed. Nevertheless some good points and good examples are made. Book is not too technical, but that was not the intent.
But how do these experts make sense of a highly uncertain future? In Arguments that Count, Rebecca Slayton offers an important new perspective. Only decades later, after establishing computing as a science, were advisors able to analyze authoritatively the risks associated with complex software -- most notably, the risk of a catastrophic failure. In a rapidly changing world, we rely upon experts to assess the promise and risks of new technology. As we continue to confront new threats, including that of cyber attack, Slayton offers valuable insight into how different kinds of expertise can limit or expand our capacity to address novel technological risks.. She compares how two different professional communities -- physicists and computer scientists -- constructed arguments about the risks of missile defense, and how these arguments changed over time. Slayton shows that our understanding of technological risks is shaped by disciplinary repertoires -- the codified knowledge and mathematical rules that experts use to frame new challenges. And, significantly, a new repertoire can bring long-neglected risks into clear view.In the 1950s, scientists recognized that high-speed computers would be needed to cope with the unprecedented speed of ICBMs. Dr
(William Aspray, Bill and Lewis Suit Professor of Information Technologies School of Information, University of Texas at Austin)Rebecca Slayton's comprehensive and well-researched history of the science -- and politics -- of missile defense sheds new and valuable light upon a consistently under-appreciated aspect of the challenge: computer software. (Gabrielle Hecht, Professor of History, University of Michigan; author of Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade)Slayton finds an ingenious and novel way to tell the history of missile defense systems anew: as a stage on which physicists and computing experts -- computer professionals? software engineers? this group's muddled ide