Assigment Blog: Week 2

A number of themes are explored in Paul Edwards chapters 2 and 3 of The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America, but the primary purpose is to explore the development of computing resulting from and during the post-World War II era. This involves not just the actual form of the technology itself but also the reasons it took the directions it took in terms of political and military pressures and the decisions of individuals.

There can be no doubt that availability of funding and resources is one of the most important deciding factors in determining how technology develops and more specifically WHICH technology develops. However, it is not the only factor. As Vanevar Bush said in the other reading for this week, one important thing is the collusion of ideas. Information must get from those who have it or have discovered it to those who can use it and develop it further. Military projects often allow for such things by employing a wide variety of scientific specialties to work on the same project. On the other hand, the level of secrecy imposed can severely cripple the sharing of information. Other, less obvious things can also play a role. For instance (pg 97) in the case of SAGE explored in this reading where one of the reasons analog technology was not explored in more detail to try improve its accuracy rather than looking to digital was because MIT threatened to withdraw unless digital was used. (This reminds me a lot of the BetaMax vs. VHS and DVD vs. BlueRay contests where the winner was not necessarily the better technology but was the one that was better supported by other technology, public opinion, or executive choices.)

Chapter 2 highlights this evolution of analog computing vs. digital computing. Analog was originally used most extensively because it was seen as more reliable and had more useful forms of input and output. Digital on the other hand was originally hard to accomplish in real time and not all that reliable, but could do much more accurate/precise computation. In Chapter 3, we meet SAGE/Whirlwind, the military funded compromise that was supposed to blend the two in order to solve the problem of "air defense."

Before examining the readings conclusions about the effectiveness of SAGE however, I think another important thing to consider is the effect of human irrationality and perception on technology.

Technology as we know is not developed linearly. New inventions do not come into being because it was preordained that they should, but because there was a need, an idea, and some entity willing to invest in the resources. This isn't necessarily an efficient means of development since the solution may not be the best one, the need may not be the most pressing, and since the funds may or may not be rationally allocated, but alas, that's how it is. (If only engineers ruled the world!)

In the case of the time frame presented, this development occurred because of real human insecurity about wartime technology, particularly air missiles and the nuclear bomb. The latter had made a real impression on the human psyche, leading to the idea that technology wasn't just our plaything that we controlled and could play nice with...rather it was something UNcontrollable and threatening that we somehow needed to find a technological solution to. In fact, air raids were almost impossible to detect and launch any real defense against at the current technology level and with whole cities being reasonable targets, life itself seemed precarious in the era following the development of areial warfare. Some statistics given in the reading (pg 86) suggest that at best only 30% of attacks could even be somewhat defensible, and it would be almost impossible to mitigate even 10% of the damage of a nuclear attack.

Because of this very real fear, it lead to implausible assumptions and paranoia about the USSR. Government fear and political motivation lead to the overestimating of Soviet resources, spurring American furvor to develop increasing defense (and offense) against it. (pg 87-88) Propaganda used to recruit and engender support was often strongly worded and misleading.

And yet at the same time, though we wanted to rely on technology to protect us against its kin, we were also suspicious, afraid to give it free rein without at least some human oversight (which, considering the level of reasoning intelligence of a computer is only that at which it is programmed to consider various inputs, is probably a good thing).

So SAGE was just one solution to the problem...an attempt to take all various inputs and monitor war situations and launch necessary defense. In actuality, we find at the end of the reading that the truth is SAGE never did work very well...it was easily jammed by the numerous input and results showing its success were often fudged. (Okay if anyone is still reading this...I HIGHLY recommend watching Pentagon Wars starring Kelsey Grammar. Reminds me very strongly of this situation!)

In fact, the reading speculates (with supporting evidence) that it was likely SAGE was never really intended to work that well (kinda like the Star Wars of the Reagan era, I would argue), and that the real veiled intent was that any real warfare would take the place of America making a first strike on Russia. (pg 110)

Yet...SAGE wasn't an altogether failure. It helped to mitigate the fears that birthed it by providing some sort of seeming control to dissipate the helplessness that the nuclear and air raid technology created. Not to mention that even when it proved not very workable, some of the resultant technology became a firmly ingrained part of future technology. Modern computers would not be able to do the things they do without multiplexing, networking, parallel digital logic, and many of the other things Edwards gives credit to SAGE and Whirlwind for advancing.