Books Reviewed by Barrett Hazeltine
Alexander, Jennifer Karns. The Mantra of Efficiency: From Waterwheel to Social Control. Baltimore: TheJohnsHopkins University Press, 2008. Pp. xvii + 233. Hardcover, $49.95.
The notion of “efficiency” can be applied to machinery, to economic systems, to human factors in production, to self-improvement, to global trade, and undoubtedly much more. I found the individual chapters thoughtful and fascinating, but the connection to a central theme was not quite clear. The discussion about engineering efficiency is focused on motion, rather than on a comparison of input and output energy. A distinction is made between static and dynamic efficiencies, between balance and growth. Dynamic efficiency deals with a system moving toward a new state, as when a technology modernizes. Efficiency has also been used as a framework in planning industrial organizations. In the technical sense, efficiency is a ratio between like quantities, such as useful energy to available energy, but the term has been broadened, and people discuss the efficiency of a factory in terms of number of shoes produced per kilowatt-hour. The first chapter deals with waterwheels. The second with machines in general, and their relationship to human labor. The third deals with the efficiency of natural selection in evolution. The fourth starts with a discussion of the efficiency of mill workers in New England and gets into personal efficiency through a series of questions like “Are you thoroly (sic) informed on scientific management?” Efficient seating for workers in the Weimar Republic comes next, and then a dispute about the efficiency of slave labor in the American South, and finally, concern about efficiency in present global society is discussed. One question is whether early childhood education is an efficient use of funds. The concept of efficiency, as Alexander notes, is a slippery one. Seeing how the concept has evolved is interesting. It is not entirely clear to me, however, that these various uses give significant insight about each other.
Anderson, Ray C., with Robin White. Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose —Doing Business by Respecting the Earth. New York: St. Martins Press, 2009. Pp. xvi + 302. Hardcover, $25.99.
Ray Anderson is the founder of Interface, the dominant company in the rug tile business. He describes why and how he worked to reduce the company’s environmental footprint to get close to zero. One reason why was that a customer asked what the company was doing for the environment. Another reason was reading Paul Hawken’s book, The Ecology of Commerce. One approach to a zero footprint is to eliminating waste. Other approaches involve making emissions benign, increasing efficiency, using renewable energy, copying nature’s way though closed-loop recycling, and promoting resource-efficient transportation. Two other approaches are to raise people’s sensitivity toward sustainability and to redesign commerce to ensure accurate costs. The approach to eliminating waste is to define it, then measure it, then create a baseline number for a facility, then encourage that facility to reduce the waste by 10% each year, and, finally, making sure everyone knows how the facility is doing and how it compares to other facilities. In working toward benign emissions Anderson looks at his own plants but also at those of his suppliers, using a “trust but verify” approach. An unexpected benefit of using solar energy is that customers seek out products made with renewable energy so sales of such product increase, decreasing the payback period of the solar electric system. After running the numbers, Interface found that rail transportation uses about 25% of the BTUs per ton-mile required by trucks (and much less than air.) Transportation efficiencies were also gained by redesigning the rug tiles to weigh less. A company and its suppliers are people, and social sustainability is an important part of environmental sustainability. Interface, whenever possible, sources locally available materials, draws on the skills of local artisans, and works with local NGOs to create earning opportunities for communities. Anderson makes a fervent plea for a change in attitude toward the earth, drawing on the biblical tradition of being a shepherd. He calls on universities to be a leader in the awakening of sensitivity. Throughout the book he emphasizes that fairness and efficiency are linked. Being inefficient is not fair to those who have little to waste, nor is it fair to consign the disadvantaged to live next to waste disposal places or smoking factories. It is not possible to earn profits indefinitely at the expense of the environment nor at the expense of the people who live near you. Anderson is different from many who write about environmental sustainability because he has succeeded in greatly reducing the harm done by his company on the environmental while continuing to be economically sustainable. He writes with eloquence and passion. Inspiring!
Bardi, Jason Socrates. The Fifth Postulate: How Unraveling a Two-Thousand-Year-Old Mystery Unraveled the Universe. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley Press, 2009. Pp. xi + 253. Hardcover, $27.95.
The fifth postulate was stated by Euclid: two lines that are not parallel will cross if they are in the same plane. A proof was elusive, despite much work, until the early nineteenth century. The resolution created non-Euclidean geometry, which allowed mathematicians “to pursue a logical mathematical system that was divorced from reality.” Ironically, it turns out that non-Euclidean geometry does have relevance to the physical world. The approach is at the heart of the experimental confirmation of the General Theory of Relativity, done by measuring the effect of the sun’s gravitational field on the direction of light rays. The story centers around Carl Friedrich Gauss, certainly the most distinguished mathematician in the first half of the nineteenth century, who actually published hardly any of his own non-Euclidean work but gave credibility by noting the importance of the work done by others. The two mathematicians who did publish were Janos Bolyai, an army officer in Hungary, and Nikolai Lobachevsky, a professor in a remote Russian university. None of the three principals ever learned before publication of what the others were doing and, in fact, never met. The publications were, in both cases, almost totally ignored during the authors’ lifetimes, which especially disheartened Bolyai. Gauss was working on many other problems, including wireless transmission, and may have been reluctant to enter into the inevitable controversy about a radical departure from traditional geometry—to “stir the nests of wasps.” Lobachevsky became Rector of his distant university and seems never to have entered the mainstream of European mathematics. From their experiences the peril of creating an entirely new approach to a well-studied subject comes out clearly. Gauss points out that he could never have understood Lobachevsky unless he had already thought long and hard about the problem, and Gauss’s colleagues were simply unprepared for the new paradigm. The narrative gives insight into how research was done in a time without a close scientific network, nor external pressures to publish and seek grants. The history of attempts to prove the fifth postulate includes many, perhaps most, of the major figures in mathematics in the last two thousand years, and Bardi includes stories about many of these people. The exposition is clear and accessible, even suspenseful. A drawing or two would have helped me, as well as slightly longer explanations of the mathematics, but such might have been intimidating to the general reader. All in all, the book is a good read, about an unfamiliar story, one with some worthwhile lessons.
Bryant, John and Chris Sangwin. How Round is Your Circle? Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. xix +306. Hardcover, $29.95.
A simpler problem than the roundness of a circle is how do you know if an angle is really a right angle? An experiment to check is to make a triangle of wood or cardboard including the angle in question. Set one side of the triangle along a straight line, mark the position of the ostensibly right angle, mark the position of the other corner of the triangle, then flip the triangle over, set the same side against the same straight line with the ostensibly right angle in the same position, and see if the other corner is at the same point. Much of the book is about making models to “prove” mathematical ideas. Most of the mathematics illustrated is geometry and trigonometry, with some attention to infinite series. The latter comes up in considering a stack of dominoes, where each domino partly overlaps the domino beneath it, the stack appearing to lean in one direction. The question is how far in the horizontal direction can the stack extend? The answer is as far as one likes but the height of the stack increases rapidly as more horizontal distance is spanned—the sum of the terms of the series does not converge. Other intriguing questions, amenable to a mathematical analysis, are discussed. How is a drill that makes a square hole designed? How does a planimeter, a device that measures the area of a shape by tracing its boundary, work? How is a linkage designed so one vertex moves in a circle and another moves in a straight line? The linkage is useful in various pumps and oil well mechanism. If the number of teeth in meshing gears are relatively prime, then wear caused by one misshapen tooth will be uniformly distributed over the teeth of the other gear. The authors point out that many practical engineering problems could be real challenges to mathematicians. That point may have been made before, but the context presented was unfamiliar to me and intriguing. The examples are fun, and so is the authors’ perspective.
Castells, Manuel, Jack Linchuan Qui, Mireia Fernández-Ardévol, Araba Sey.. Mobile Communications and Society: A Global Perspective. Cambridge Mass., 2006. Pp. xii + 331. $29.95.
“[T]he purpose of this book is to use social research to answer the questions surrounding the transformation of human communication by the rise and diffusion of wireless digital communication technologies.” The first two chapters review statistics describing the diffusion of wireless communication in various regions of the world and among various social groups. Most of the world’s population is using wireless as the entry to electronic communication, probably because of the paucity of fixed line alternatives. Text messaging is widely used in Europe and slightly used in North America. As people move to urban areas from rural places they have a major need for communication, which mobile phones are meeting. As lower income consumers embrace mobile communications, providers are offering lower cost services. From a low-income customer point-of-view, mobility is not of great importance—most of the phones stay in the household, guarded by the mother. Prepaid service, phone cards, are the dominant method of paying for service, and lower income customers spend much of their discretionary cash on such, evidently to the detriment of food, especially snack retailers. Mobile phones influence everyday life in important ways: they keep company staff relentlessly connected; they micro-coordinate families; they transform sociability; they are perceived as improving safety and security. Youth culture has dramatically embraced mobile communications; patterns are described from Europe, the United States, and the Asian Pacific. Mobil communications change the nature of space and time, creating a space that is both local and global, and desequencing activities by compressing time or allowing a random ordering of actions. Text messaging appears to be influencing the writing skills of young people, especially outside the United States. Wireless communication has had significant influence in political affairs. President Estrada lost an election in the Philippines, partly at least because massive demonstrations were organized by cell phone. Similarly, in Korea, when exit polls indicated Roh Moo-Hyun was behind (at 11:00 AM) his supporters created a surge of emails urging young people to vote and Roh was elected. In Spain, in 2004, individual activists used their cell phone address books to send messages that were perceived as true, in contrast to the information presented on government-controlled television; the government lost the ensuing election. Mobile communications appears to have much potential for supporting development in the Third World. Although cost and regulatory issues have been problems, entrepreneurs and users have found solutions. This chapter was evidently written in 2005, and much has been accomplished since then in making cell phones generally available, at least in Africa. The case studies included are based in China, India, Uganda, South Africa, Ghana, and Chile. The perspective of most of the book’s content is from the social sciences. Important issues are described and much research, especially outside the United States, is summarized. Wireless networks will certainly have a very important influence on most spheres of society in the future and the direction of change is not quite clear—the book helps clarify the issues.
Chatterjee, Pratap. Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War. New York: Nation Books, 2009. Pp. xvi + 284. Hardcover, $26.95.
Halliburton, through its former subsidiary KBR, handled a large portion of the logistics of the building and supplying of bases, for the Iraq war. The bases in question are luxurious, with extravagant meals, and for the cost to taxpayers they should be. An Army officer explains; “How else can a volunteer army be retained?” Meal preparation and housekeeping—picking up after the soldiers—is managed by the corporation and actually done by so-called “Third Country Nationals,” from the Philippines, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Hiring local people was deemed too dangerous. Not surprisingly, Halliburton collected major profits from their contracts. The out-sourcing strategy described was developed and promoted by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, before Cheney became President of Halliburton. The justification, of course, is that it makes no sense to have trained army recruits working in the kitchen or painting barracks. In any case, Rumsfeld was committed in principle to a lean Army, and Third Country Nationals can be paid a prevailing Third World wage, much lower than that of a US soldier. Much of the book is about waste and purported fraud, undoubtedly promoted by sole source bidding and cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts. Beyond the cost, the situation on the ground appears to have gotten out of control: trafficking of those Third Country Nationals, civilian drivers sent into combat sites without protection, and female employees being raped are among the most visible symptoms. The book, however, makes it difficult to understand exactly what happened because many sections consist of a fairly detailed allegation of a wrong committed by Halliburton or KBR followed by a one paragraph response from a company spokesperson disputing the claim. A recurrent theme is the people working for Halliburton/KBR; who, given a choice, would want to work in battle-torn Iraq? Many who went did not have a real choice. This is not a pretty story. It does show the military-industrial complex at its worst—who in the government wants to take on a corporation formerly lead by the Vice-President of the United States, especially one staffed in many cases by former colleagues? It also shows the new model for the military, ceding essential logistics to civilian companies, just as weapons development and manufacturing are. A final lesson, already well publicized, is that things in a distant battleground can get very bad without effective oversight. A different, I presume more positive, book could have been written about how Halliburton actually did get those bases built quickly, in a difficult place, with a difficult staff.
Coburn, Pip. The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn. New York: Penquin Group (U.S.A.) Inc., 2006. Pp. xviii + 220. Illus. Hardcover, $24.95.
Technologies take off when the perceived pain of adoption is less than the perceived crisis. One example is the Atkins Diet, while another is a flat screen TV, where the crisis may be that all the people one knows have one. There are lots of examples in this book, mostly of failures, like the PicturePhone or Interactive TV, and most are related to electronics or computers. A reason why technologists do not pay attention to the pain of adoption, or to the plight of customers in general, is that they are infatuated with Grove’s Law—success comes most surely from making an order of magnitude improvement—or Moore’s Law—the cost of electronic devices decreases steadily as long as production continues. Coburn argues against the strategy of making blockbuster improvements that will become economical if only sufficient people buy. He argues for a cycle of small improvements, of accepting risk of failure, of learning and iterating. Big changes are big risks for the supplier and a pain for the user. Changes in invented technology may be inexorable, but changes in what customers will pay for are not inevitable. The focus on customer decisions makes this analysis of technological change distinct. It is fun to read, although people’s motives are probably more complex than described—whose crisis was large enough to pay $600 for a brand new iPhone?
Conover, Ted. THE ROUTES OF MAN: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010 Pp. 333. Hardcover, $26.95; paperback, $15.95.
Conover analyzes how technology—highways, in this case—change people’s lives through six detailed stories, interspersed with short essays about roads in general. The first two stories concern places where a road does not exist, a lumber town in Peru and a remote village in northern India. It seems apparent that a proposed highway to the lumber town will damage the environment, not only by the actual road construction but also by promoting destruction of the forest. The village in India is a Shangri La-like place tucked between high mountains. During the five months of summer a dirt track is passable. Otherwise, the only route in or out is along a frozen river. Conover accompanies a group of teen-age students leaving the village for schooling, pushing through the snow, avoiding soft ice over the river. In many ways, the isolated village seems like paradise—peaceful and sustainable. A planned road would alter village life greatly, and to some western observers the alterations would not be beneficial. From one perspective life without a major connecting highway is not bad; however, one gathers that the people who live in these villages favor the proposed roads. The next story concerns the Mombasa-Kampala highway, mostly in Kenya. It is generally thought that AIDS first came down this road from central Africa, carried by truck drivers to the port of Mombasa and then to the rest of the world. Still today AIDS is a major concern to some of those who frequent the road and to public health officials. The protagonist of the story, a Kenyan driver, has a wife and family at either end of the highway, knows about AIDS, and yet has not gotten himself tested. Roads carry more than goods and passengers. Roads have a military function. In the West Bank, checkpoints and roadblocks are a mechanism of brutality for Palestinians. Beyond the inconvenience and the delay are the humiliations. An Israeli officer is concerned about the effect on his men of the cruelties they believe they have to perform. Roads enrich leisure. In China new highways have made “self-driving tours” sponsored by auto clubs practical. The author took a seven-day tour from Beijing to the Three Gorges dam with a fast-driving, cigarette-smoking factory owner. For the people on the tour “Driving is our right.” The last story is about ambulance crews in Lagos. Lagos was chosen because it is one of the mega-cities gaining people but not infrastructure. Ambulances are not quite accepted in Lagos, perhaps because originally they were used for carrying corpses. Despite the equivocal feelings, the ambulance point (station) the author joined was busy, partly because people came on foot to ask the nurses for minor treatments. In any case, traffic conditions made getting to an emergency slow. Lagos has no less than five different kinds of police, and the ones nearest the author’s ambulance point seemed to spend their time hustling—harassing—drivers for small bribes. The road system reflects the uncontrolled development and how people adapt. It is hard not to enjoy these stories with their many lessons.
Crawford, Matthew B. Shop Class to Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. New York: The Penguin Press, 2009. Pp. 246. Hardcover, $25.95.
An important theme here is the recognition of the worth of the mechanic arts in liberating the spirit. Much of the story deals with fixing motorcycles. A motorcycle mechanic knows when he or she—actually nearly all the book is about men—has succeeded. Excellence is more easily recognized in a concrete (tangible) outcome than in the results of typical white collar efforts. Because such recognition is possible when the result is a physical thing, a community of practitioners develops that recognizes the subtleties of the output, and such a community is a good thing. Shop classes are disappearing from our schools, so fewer people gain the “psychic satisfactions of manual work.” The diminution of shop work reduces opportunities for a student to realize her or his interests and promise, so a person is fortunate if he or she finds work that fits. Jobs for craftspeople, like mechanics or electricians, also are much less likely to be outsourced to Asia. The converse of finding fitting work is that the work a person does acts to form that person. Mechanics and doctors fix things not of their own making—they need to be attentive not assertive. But being assertive is necessary in creating new things, as an architect or a research mathematician does. In any case, truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators. Iris Murdoch described how understanding requires “unselfing,” being attentive to the actual problem, not to one’s perception of it. Work and leisure become inter-twined when one is doing absorbing work, and the implication is that manual work can be absorbing. The example given is the author’s story about feeling compelled to work an unrealistic number of hours removing a clutch rod oil seal on a motorcycle he did not particularly like. This incident has particular poignancy—how much do you charge the customer? Another aspect of familiarity with technology is the possibility of being able to understand, even repair, one’s belongings, thereby being freed from dependence on an impersonal repair shop service representative. Life is better when one can talk to the person who fixed your car, or your stomach tumor. Crawford states he wrote the book “to get a critical handle on his own work history.” The history was uncommon, to say the least, ranging from pulling wires as an electrician at an early age, to discovering philosophy in his senior year at college, to gaining a PhD in the history of political thought, to being a group leader at a Washington think tank. He eventually opened a motorcycle repair shop. He has much to say about how in contemporary American industry thinking is separated from doing by “scientific managers,” diminishing the attractiveness of physical work. He also has much to say about the general knowledge advanced by academics compared to the particular knowledge needed by practitioners. Shop Class to Soulcraft is certainly provocative and erudite, but probably harder on white collar jobs and big corporations than it needs to be. A major concern is whether our society can create significant numbers of jobs that are absorbing and fulfilling, but this concern begs the question of whether many people really want such jobs.
Dodgson, Mark and David Gann. Innovation: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xiii+ 148. Paperback, $11.95.
The first example given of an innovator is Josiah Wedgwood. Core issues presented in the discussion are: new clays developed by refining experimentation, much attention to design—even organizing a coterie of well bred women amateur artists, innovation in manufacturing process—using steam power for mixing and grinding, quality control through rebuilding kilns and prowling the factory to weed out substandard items, new technology for measuring kiln temperature, long production runs, specialized labor, investment in worker training, transforming retailing, and working with government entities to improve ports for export and turnpikes and canals. The focus of the book is not so much on these issues themselves but on how an organization can innovate in corresponding areas. The last example is IBM, with its long history of re-inventing itself and its new efforts in health care and urban traffic management. In between is a full discussion of how Edison’s laboratory was managed—everything on site and Edison in charge—and of the invention of Kevlar at Dupont. Stephanie Kwolek, a research chemist, worked 18 years on polymer fibers before Kevlar was marketable. As the authors point out, contemporary managers probably would not be so patient.
As the subtitle states, this is “a very short introduction”—shorter than the number of pages might imply as the page size is smaller than used in most paperback books, although the font is small. Many topics are noted but few developed. Particularly striking to me was the absence of explicit prescriptions for how to innovate or how to build an innovative organization, although clues abound in the text—“accept risk and give space for the unusual and work with others that are differently minded.” For someone wanting a readable introduction to most of the important ideas about organizational innovation, this is a good choice. My overall conclusion is that the innovation process, while clearly important, is still a mystery.
Emanuel, Kerry. What We Know About Climate Change. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, Boston Review Books, 2007. Pp. xi +85. Hardcover, $14.95.
The book delivers exactly what the title promises, a succinct and readable summary of findings not in dispute plus findings with which most, not all, scientists agree. Some findings not in dispute are that present levels of CO2 are greater than that over at least the last 650,000 years, the earth’s average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2º F in the past century, and that sea level has risen by about 2.7 inches in the last 40 years. Some findings that most climate scientists agree with are that global mean temperature is now greater than at any time in the past 500 years, that the rise in temperature is due primarily to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and a leveling off of sulphate aerosols, that sea level will increase 6 to 16 inches in the next century, that rainfall will continue to become concentrated in increasingly heavy but less frequent events, and that both floods and droughts will be more severe. Although the physics of each of the processes taking place in the atmosphere is generally understood, climate change is very difficult to model, because the various processes interact. The result is that the relevant equations involve many variables, and the system, at least in the short term, is chaotic. Weather prediction is a problem of similar complexity but is more tractable because the estimates can be checked with frequent measurements in many places. Feedback mechanisms, both positive and negative, not clearly understood, could amplify or smooth climate change. Ice-core records show that climate does not change smoothly in response to fluctuations in solar radiation caused by orbital variation; rather, the climate jumps from one state to another. Emanuel makes the point that we should be wary of climate changes, especially because we do not understand the mechanism, and that we should make sacrifices now to avoid possible serious consequences. An After Word by Judith Layzer and William Moomaw asks why the United States is moving so slowly in responding to climate change. Their argument is that those concerned about the issue have had difficulty up to now in developing a coherent story, while those opposed to addressing the issue have created a coherent story, focused on the uncertainty of some of the scientific questions and on the possibility that the US economy would be harmed if measures were taken. Layzer and Moomaw point out that the sacrifices required by individuals to decrease global warming are not onerous—if in the future every American who drives 1000 miles a month drove 30 fewer miles the cumulative effect would be sufficient to bring carbon dioxide atmospheric levels back to their present value. In several places the book makes a case for technological literacy, for an understanding by citizens and government leaders of what causes climate change and what can be done about it. The book is an admirable example of how to create technological literacy. All readers would learn much from it and enjoy the experience.
Friedel, Robert. A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2007. Pp. x + 588. Hardcover, $42.95.
John von Neumann’s observation “Technological possibilities are irresistible to man” sums up a central idea: someone will be compelled to improve whatever can be improved. The domain of the exposition extends from an English plowman in the year 1000 or so who exclaims “O dear master, I work very hard: …” to the cloning of Dolly. The book’s focus is strongly on Europe and North America. Technological leadership seems to migrate among countries, from Italy to Germany to Britain to the United States, although the appearance of such movement may be an artifact of the presentation. Friedel mentions by name the traditionally recognized innovators but also points out that technological change is generally the integral of many small improvements. It is striking how much research and development was supported by the military, especially in recent years when expenses became enormous. Although economists might disagree, it appears the motive for inventions were not generally an attempt to become rich but an effort to save work, which may be equivalent to increasing profit. A very important motivator is the satisfaction of solving a problem—as von Neumann points out above. Irresistible urges, to innovate or otherwise, do not always lead to socially beneficial results. Eugenics, discussed at some length, is one outcome of this drive to improve. Friedel indicates that the climate of opinion about technology has changed in the last several decades, with heightened concern about consequences, vide Environmental Impact Statements. (An Atlantic Monthly article a year or so ago asks “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”) The book, though, makes only passing reference to the Luddites. I enjoyed most the descriptions of the technology and the people. A technological example is how spinning and weaving moved out of households into factories and in the process became “Men’s Work,” rather than “Women’s Work.” A people example is the last statement by the last astronaut on leaving the moon: “Okay, Jack, let’s get this mutha outta here.” The questions of why technology changes and whether the change is controllable will probably remain with me longer though than the particulars of the history. This is a very satisfying book.
Frost, Gary L. Early FM Radio: Incremental Technology in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Pp. xi plus 191. Hardcover, $48.35.
Frost presents another perspective on the story of how FM radio broadcasting came into being—an antidote, if you will, to the story presented by the Ken Burns documentary Empire of the Air or in the book by Lawrence Lessing, Edwin Howard Armstrong: Man of High Fidelity (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1956). The first part of the present book describes early work, before 1920, beginning with a frequency shift keying system developed in 1902 by Cornelius Ehret and the arc-oscillator of the well-known Valdemar Poulsen. (It seems to me that frequency shift keying bears the same relationship to FM broadcasting as Morse code does to AM.)This part includes a short review of the principles of modulation and broadcasting. The second part of the book is basically a recounting of Armstrong’s dealings with RCA. RCA licensed Armstrong’s regeneration and superheterodyne circuits in 1922, and in return Armstrong became a very large shareholder in RCA. He also signed a first refusal agreement with RCA covering future patents, which gave Armstrong access to the FM related technical work taking place at RCA, and also at AT&T, GE, and Westinghouse which shared a patent pool. Frost implies such access was of significant value to Armstrong. Frost further states that Armstrong generally did not share his own work. Armstrong worked basically independently and first demonstrated his system in 1934. RCA, however, elected not to pursue FM. Frost believes the RCA decision was based on the inconclusiveness of the demonstration, although one could argue it was simply “Not Invented Here.” Armstrong went on to make impressive public demonstrations, and FM was picked up by other radio manufacturers.
Two of the reasons FM appeared attractive were anti-fading and noise reduction. An argument for noise reduction was that the FM carrier frequencies would be much higher than that used for AM, and noise was believed to be less at higher frequencies. Mathematical analysis at AT&T had shown early that narrow band FM did not offer noise discrimination. An argument against wide band FM was that the wider band allowed more noise into the receiver, but the wide band system ultimately perfected by Armstrong showed nearly noise (static) free reception—the reason FM is used so commonly now.
Early FM Radio is marred for me by unsubstantiated statements about Armstrong’s beliefs and insights. Armstrong evidently made contradictory statements over the course of his research about whether wideband FM would eliminate static. On that basis Frost claims Armstrong serendipitously fell into his successful FM broadcasting system. A full transcript of what Armstrong actually said would have been helpful in supporting the claim. An electrical engineering colleague pointed out several technical errors in the book. The book does include references to various approaches to the sociology of technology. Early FM Radio is probably of most interest to someone already familiar with the history, and the text may suggest important questions. People without such familiarity are probably better off starting elsewhere—for example, the Lessing book or the Burns documentary noted above. These also give a picture of the complex and tragic person who was E. H. Armstrong.
Gelb, Michael J. and Sarah Miller Caldicott. Innovate Like Edison: the Success System of America's Greatest Inventor. New York: Penquin Group (USA), 2007. Pp. xv +300. $25.95.
Two books are here: a brief, laudatory biography of Edison and a guide to becoming a better innovator. The biography is readable, with appealing anecdotes. It is long on Edison’s successes and short on the DC/AC controversy. The biography appears to be mostly a framework for the book the authors really wanted to write, which begins with five competencies of innovation. (It was not clear to me if these derive directly from Edison’s writings or from the authors’ analysis.) The competencies are: 1) Solution-Centered Mindset, 2) Kaleidoscopic Thinking, 3) Full-Spectrum Engagement, 4) Master-Mind Collaboration, and 5) Super-Value Creation. The last of these deals with delivering value to one’s customer or, from another point-of-view, advises the reader not to work on an invention if no customer exists. Each of these competencies is expanded to five elements—the first element for the first competency, Solution-Centered Mindset, is “Align your goals with your passions.” The book culminates in five assessments—full page “tests”—that the reader can use to make an individual innovation development plan. Justification for the particular elements, or even the competencies, is not given, although they appear reasonable. Readers interested in how people innovate or in improving their own innovation skills should find the discussion worthwhile and the Edison story engaging. The value of the book depends, of course, on one’s trust in the authors’ approach and appreciation of their style.
Gómez, Nicolás Wey. The Tropics Of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008. Pp. xxiv + 592. Hardcover, $42.95.
Columbus started his first voyage of discovery by sailing from Spain to the Canary Islands, then due west until reaching the Caribbean Islands, and then explored in a southerly direction. The other voyages followed the same pattern. Wey Gómez argues that Columbus chose to go south because of his belief that the tropics, all tropics, were a place where the hot sun produced gold and other riches and where the people were more timid, although ingenious, than in the temperate zones. This belief in the overriding importance of place came from extensive study of contemporary and classical scholarship. Further, when Columbus made landfall, he was convinced he had reached Asia and thought south to India was better than north to China—more gold in India and less danger from Mongol armies. A political reason also existed. A peace treaty, written with West Africa in mind, between the governments of Castile and Portugal gave sovereignty of everything south of the Canary Islands to Portugal. Columbus was mystified by the place he reached because it was unlike the tropics he expected. The weather was temperate and the people looked like those on the Canary Islands, rather than like the “Ethiopians,” expected in such a place. The expectation of place and the people living there lead to an attitude that enslavement and exploitation was legitimate. This is a very impressive historical work based on both ancient and medieval documents, showing how a world-view directed the course of exploration.
Greenberg, Gary. The Noble Lie: When Scientists Give the Right Answers for the Wrong Reasons. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2008. Pp.viii + 243. Hardcover, $25.95.
The “Noble Lies” discussed include turning addiction into a chronic disease, prescribing drugs as a treatment for depression, considering homosexuality as intrinsic, using insanity to protect the Unabomber from execution, defining brain death so organs can be harvested, and not treating patients in a persistent vegetative state. Each of these “lies” benefit someone, usually the person directly involved—considering depression as a treatable illness allows patients to receive otherwise proscribed medications—but are dishonest. Greenberg concludes the book by stating that the truth will emerge. The science that indicates addiction fits the usual definition of disease is sparse, but making addiction a disease opens opportunities for treatment. Declaring a person brain dead while her/his heart is still beating ensures that the organs to be harvested remain viable—benefiting another patient, as well as a surgeon. Parents are comforted by sustaining life in a comatose offspring—it is not clear if the patient is better off. One story describes how the author signed up to be a subject for research into the anti-depressant properties of omega-3 fatty acids. In the biweekly visits to the hospital the author attempts to give reasoned answers to questions about his emotional state. The researchers will have none of it. I presume they wanted data easily coded. Frequent assurances are given that “you are much improved.” The test was double blind but at the end the author had a pill tested—it was the placebo. The ways of diagnosing depression are much different from diagnosing bronchitis. One chapter deals with ensuring immortality by quick freezing bodies, or at least heads, to be woken up in a more advanced time when presently fatal ailments are curable. I suppose the noble lie is that any physical structure will be left at wake-up time. The issues considered are certainly at the boundary between science and society. The conflict is sometimes between an individual’s liberty and the life of someone else, as in abortion, drunk driving deterrence, or harvesting organs. “Disease Mongering” is creating a disease—erectile dysfunction is an example—that our medical system makes profitable for drug makers, doctors, hospitals, and others. Again, I presume some patients benefit from the existence of the new disease. In any case, nearly all the noble lies described make money for someone. Greenberg does a very good job of finding absorbing examples. I did not always agree with his thinking, but my attention never wavered. There is a great deal here to think about.
Hård, Mikael and Andrew Jamison. Hubris and Hybrids: A Cultural History of Technology and Science. New York: Routledge, 2005. Pp. xv + 335. Paperback, $32.95.
"Hubris" refers to the will to dominate nature shown by innovative scientists—think James Watson. “Hybrid” refers to the combination of technological/scientific ideas with social/cultural norms that create lasting change—think personal hygiene. This history is not focused on the great persons who invented and discovered, rather it focuses on how technoscience ideas were appropriated by the general culture—as mobility became mostly automobility. Appropriation of technology takes place on three levels: discursive, organizational, and practical. A strength of the book to me is its European orientation, both because many of the examples were unfamiliar to me, and because European perspectives on Americans come through clearly. The first block, of four in the book, deals with scientific and industrial transformations, beginning in the seventeenth century and extending to the present. A chapter deals with the places science and engineering were done, from the agora, through coffee houses and salons, to lecture halls and laboratories. The second block deals with cultural attitudes toward technoscience, including attitudes in India and China. Environmental concerns are a focus. The third block deals with three important technologies—mobility, communication, and public health—not so much about the technologies as about people’s feelings toward them. The final block discusses politics and business as related to science and technology. “Big Science” vs. “Little Science” is part of the discussion, as are protest movements, both in Norway and in Chicago. As the authors intend, this is a different approach to the history of technology and science; their Introduction is entitled “A Need for New Stories.” The stories are absorbing and worthwhile. I did not understand some of the overall framework and theory and suspect some ideas were lost in the translation. Also, unlike many histories of technology, this account goes to contemporary times. I found many provocative and unfamiliar insights here.
Hård, Mikael and Thomas J. Misa, eds. Urban Machinery: Inside Modern Cities. Cambridge: Mass.: The MIT Press, 2008. Pp. viii + 351. Hardcover, $45.00.
The Preface writes of the “technological dimensions of modern European cities.” In fact, most of the cities discussed are in Eastern Europe—probably a benefit to many U.S. readers because the cities are less familiar. “Modern” means after 1880 or so, up to 2000. A recurring theme is how technology transfers from one nation to another, through conferences and visits—many to the U.S. Another theme is the influence of “modern” architecture. Technology influences city planning in many ways; one is infrastructure—water, sanitation, transportation, gas and electricity. If local transportation is inexpensive and land is cheap, then the various functions of a city—“working, dwelling, leisure”—can take place in spatially separate locales. A specific factory was the purpose of some of the cities described. Shopping, and trade in general, were the purpose of others. Another dimension of technology is building materials, both traditional and new. A listing of topics may give the flavor of the book. The first paper deals with freight navigation on the Rhine and the cities that worked to be the head of navigation—the furthest from the sea that large ships could go. A second paper describes modernizing Istanbul—giving water, sanitation, and gas lighting to the new suburbs, where the Europeans tended to live. European architects appropriated modern architecture, lead by Le Corbusier, but also adapted so that modern buildings in Czechoslovakia were different from modern buildings in Holland. Cities developed into places of consumption, represented both by prestigious department stores in Paris and resorts in southern Spain. Before the First World War, German ideas about city planning were the basis of new approaches in both the US and Great Britain. In Holland around 1900 the street became the layered space it is now, with sewers and subways underground and separate lanes for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles; the various technologies came to Holland from many places in Europe and North America. Electrification took place in European cities basically during the first half of the twentieth century, competing with gas. After the rise of socialist governments in Eastern Europe in the 1950s, new industrial cites were built. These shared many planning ideas based on a Socialist philosophy and on a determination to industrialize quickly. An answer to Silicon Valley was promoted for the region near Munich. The small town of Garching, near Munich, was transformed into a “Science City,” partly through the construction of a nuclear reactor. The Soviet model of large housing blocks was exported to new cities in Hungary, which were based around a factory and lacked social institutions and recreational facilities. In Sweden during the 1950s and 1960s, the notion of a car-friendly city, like Los Angeles, was advanced as the route to modernity. Also in Sweden an attempt to build an environmentally friendly city ended up with an expensive and impressive tower—a “traditional story of technological hubris.” Many examples of the influence of new technologies and new ideas about technology abound in these papers. They do make one frightened of the results of focusing too narrowly on the urban machinery to the exclusion of people.
Hart, Steven. The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America’s First Superhighway. New York: The New Press, 2007. Pp.viii +216. Illus. Hardcover, $25.95.
This is the story of the Pulaski Skyway. I presume everyone who has lived in the New Jersey/New York area knows the Pulaski Skyway crosses the New Jersey meadowlands, connects Newark and Jersey City, and links New York City through the Holland Tunnel with major routes west and south. The name “Skyway” is used because at the time of its construction, the War Department insisted that bridges crossing the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers have 135-foot clearance although shipping on those rivers was essentially non-existent, the later New Jersey Turnpike is generally close to ground level. The insistence came after parts of the road were completed, so steep grades had to be incorporated in the bridge approaches. The bridge designers were guided by the best model for transportation at the time—a railroad. The result was a narrow roadway with no shoulders and access ramps on the left. It became clear after a few years that the viaduct was unsafe for trucks, and they were banned. The Skyway was dedicated in 1932, so much of the construction took place during the depression, when workers had little bargaining power. In fact, non-union workers, harassed by union labor, built the viaduct, and more than one person was killed in the battle between union and non-union workers. The union asked for $0.25 an hour more than what was actually paid. The expense attributable to protecting and working with non-union labor turned out to be about five times the total cost required to pay the extra 25 cents. Much of the book is about the mayor of Jersey City, Frank Hague, who ran a remarkably effective political organization—he did not like the term “machine.” One ward leader felt compelled to apologize to Mayor Hague, a Democrat, because two Republican votes turned up in his ward. Despite his party affiliation, and at least partly because of his antipathy to a labor leader, Mayor Hague insisted on an open shop for the viaduct construction and reacted with massive force to the murder of a non-union worker. The mayor’s shenanigans would be more fun to read if they had not been so brutal. The story is absorbing—hard to put down in fact. As Hart remarks, the story is also a lens to examine an industry in one locale at one time and to look for lessons.
Kelly, Kevin. WHAT TECHNOLOGY WANTS. New York: Penguin, 2010. Pp. 406. Hardcover, $27.95.
What is the essence of technology? What can we do to steer it so as to maximize its benefits? We can steer it best by aligning efforts along the “natural” directions that technology wants to go. These directions are to increase efficiency, opportunity, emergence, complexity, diversity, specialization, ubiquity, freedom, mutualism, beauty, sentience, structure, evolvability. Understanding the essence of technology begins with human evolution, with an emphasis on technology. We learn that the rate of warfare deaths is about 5 times as great among hunter-gathers than among agricultural based societies, so more technology is not always more lethal. Six major transitions in technology have taken place, of which Kelly believes the creation of language was the most significant. The result of language and writing is that particular technological artifacts never entirely disappear. Parts are still available for the Stanley Steamer. The evolution of technology is a continuation of the organizing of the cosmos from raw electromagnetic energy to mass to information. A striking graph shows an almost linear, on a log scale, decrease in energy gradient (amount of energy flowing through one gram of the system) from a galaxy to a Pentium chip. Evolution of living things and of technology does have a direction, “shaped by the nature of matter and energy.” The complex things we see around us, humans, for example, are improbable but inevitable. The same inevitability guides the evolution of technology. This inevitability is reflected by the near simultaneity of many inventions and also by the observed difficulty in leapfrogging over a basic technology in implementing an advanced one—computers in Ethiopian hospitals will not be useful until electric power is reliable. The data on how technology has changed show a clear pattern. Moore’s Law probably describes the best known pattern. Each year computers get 50% better and 50% smaller and 50% cheaper. The direction of long term trends is inevitable because the direction reflects what a technology is built to do. People would do best to align themselves with this direction. Each new technology creates problems, usually the problems caused by the previous technology—automobiles create more pollution than horses did. The Unabomber recognized the problems brought by new technology and argued for less of it. In fact, people tend to embrace new technologies without doing a cost/benefit calculation. The reason is not clear for this nearly universal but irrational embrace. It is similar to an addiction,. The Amish are one group that does consider carefully whether to adopt a new technology. All of us should evaluate based on the qualities or directions listed in the beginning of this review. Provocative ideas in the book, nearly always supported with compelling examples. Such a grand sweep of the history and character of technology is illuminating. One does not have to agree with all of the ideas to benefit from reading the book.
Maeda, John. Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2006.
Pp. 129. Hardcover, $21.00.
“Simplicity = Sanity.” The first four, out of ten, laws are: Reduce, Organize, [Decrease] Time, Learn. The rest of the laws are more subtle—“Simplicity and complexity need each other;” how much of each though? Or “Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.” The learner needs help in discerning the obvious and selecting the meaningful. Three keys presented are: “Away”—reduce complexity by moving it away, as in cloud computing; “Open”—be open to others, where open source coding is the example; “Power”—using less is better. Maeda enjoys word play and clever graphics, engaging the reader. It is hard to argue against simplicity or against being stimulated to take it seriously. One finds here much to think about but not many strategies—an approach consistent with the theme. The web site http://lawsofsimplicity.com/ seems to capture most of the text with annotations.
Mazur, Alan. True Warnings and False Alarms: Evaluating Fears about Health Risks of Technology, 1948-1971. Washington: Resources for the Future, 2004. Pp. viii +191. Paperback, $18.95.
Thirty-One warnings about the health implications of various new technologies—water supply fluoridation, shoe fitting fluoroscopes, injuries on synthetic turf, to mention a few—were published in 1977. (The actual warnings were made 1948-1971.) Which of these warnings were valid? How can the public decide if a warning is valid? Mazur argues successfully for four hypotheses: 1) True warnings are more likely to reach the news media through reputable scientific channels; 2) False alarms tend to have sponsors with biases against the producers of the alleged hazard; 3) Hyped media coverage is likely to indicate a false alarm; 4) A warning arising from a popular social issue is more likely to indicate a false alarm. For example, a warning arising from a popular social issue is radiation from defective televisions, which derived from concerns about nuclear fallout and medical/dental x-rays. Mazur rates whether a warning is true or false using two criteria, which generally agree. The first criterion is empirical, based on a standard summary of empirical health effects. The second criterion is regulatory, the presence or absences of pertinent government regulations. Using these criteria, seventeen of the thirty one warnings were true. Mazur’s hypotheses more accurately distinguish the true warnings. The case list, published in 1977, was complied by Edward Lawless. He made an assessment then about the validity of the warnings. His assessment was correct in about 70% of the cases. The book includes chapters about public attitudes concerning technology, beginning in 1900 and particularly in the 1948-1971 era. Also included is a convincing discussion of his methodology. The case studies about warnings give a good picture of the political pressures present in regulating technology—a prominent argument against fluoridation involved concerns about communists in the government, which was feared would lead the country to socialized medicine. A layperson or an engineering undergraduate would have no difficulty understanding the presentation. At a time when the president of General Motors calls global warming a “crock,” the issues of public decisions about technology seem entirely contemporary and not significantly closer to resolution than they were.
Morton, David L, and Joseph Gabriel. “Electronics: The Life Story of a Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Paperback edition 2007. Pp. xi + 201. $ 19.95.
Morton and Gabriel present a history of electronic devices, from Fleming’s Valve to Josephson Junctions. Included are excerpts from the IEEE oral history archives—Nick Holonyak recalling a conversation with John Bardeen about Shockley’s contribution to the invention of the transistor, Gordon Moore on his law, and so forth. One is struck with how early the basic ideas for many inventions originated. Some examples include: a field effect transistor-like device was proposed in 1926, MEMS were proposed in 1960, Bell Labs announced development of a solar cell in 1954. One is also struck with how existing technologies continued to improve as rivals came on. An obvious example is the advances in vacuum tube technology after the invention of semiconductors. Another theme is the major contribution made by the military to development of electronic devices; a corollary is the decrease in the development effort when the cold war lost intensity. A fourth theme is internationalization—how the center of manufacturing and then product development moved away from the United States to Europe and, especially, Asia. It is not clear if really exciting developments in electronic devices are still to come; perhaps such innovation these will be related to biology and medicine. The focus is almost entirely on devices, not circuits or systems. I do not think the words “feedback” or “modulation” appear. Most of the diagrams are taken from patent documents so have historical interest but can be difficult to understand. A three-paragraph explanation of semiconductors is included, but a reader without more background would probably not understand the operations of many devices. The account would probably be easier to read without the inclusion of names of so many inventors and with fewer blind alleys—are bubble memories still being considered? Just as the use of many physical phenomena is not immediately evident, it is hard for me to recognize many readers who need this book, although a reader curious about the basics of devices might be interested.
Palmer, Stephen. Launching Global Health: The Caribbean Odyssey of the Rockefeller Foundation. Ann Arbor, Mich.: The University of Michigan Press, 2010. Pp. xi + 301. Hardcover, $70.00.
In 1913, The Rockefeller Foundation began a campaign to eradicate hookworm in six countries of Central America and the Caribbean, the first campaign of a US based philanthropic foundation to improve health internationally. Six efforts were started, in British Guiana first, then in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and Trinidad. The basic guidelines were similar for each effort: to eradicate the disease, to ensure sustainability by educating the populace about the relevant science, to catalyze local efforts, and to be a laboratory for further programs in larger countries such as Brazil, Egypt, and Sri Lanka. Before starting internationally, the Rockefeller people had experience with hookworm eradication in the US South, where the basic strategy, the “intensive method,” was developed. Leaders of the international programs, before deployment, were sent for several months training in North Carolina and Mississippi. The method consisted of identifying every resident, sending teams house-to-house to collect fecal specimens from each person, examining each specimen under a microscope, and then treating those infected with a massive dose of a “vermifuge.” The approach borrowed much from ideas of assembly line production. The registration/treatment strategy was complemented by education about germs and building latrines.
The campaigns met with varying degrees of success in the six countries. A major contribution of the book is comparing the outcomes and teasing out the differences. The work in Costa Rica built on an existing government hookworm programs and worked with a heterogeneous population speaking basically the same language. The legacy was a strong Ministry of Health. British Guiana and Trinidad were British colonies with strong colonial heritages. The British collaborator there had his own hookworm treatment strategy based on treating plantation workers who could be forced to take small daily medicinal doses. The multi-ethnic aspect of the intensive approach, as well as of the teams implementing it, probably made the colonial powers nervous. In any case, neither host country renewed the program. When efforts started in Guatemala, a major problem was reaching the indigenous population, which spoke little Spanish and did not work on the large plantations. A hero of the book is Dr. Alvin Struse,who first worked to overcome plantation owners’ resistance to putting resources toward the native people. The hookworm effort was interrupted by a major earthquake and then by a yellow fever epidemic. The erratic national dictator appointed Struse to be top medical officer in the country. Struse contained the yellow fever but tragically died when the 1918 influenza epidemic arrived in Guatemala, probably originating in the local US military camps.
The scientific message of germs and sanitation, an important part of the Rockefeller strategy, was not always easy to convey. An especial problem was the presence of low-level infection, forcing people who did not feel sick to be treated. In British Guiana, where a major target population was indentured plantation workers from India, the field officer authored and distributed a tale, “The Demons that Turned into Worms,” based on popular Hindi stories. Use of such parables, especially when presented by a local Brahmin holy person, was a long way from sending disciplined health worker teams into every household.
The outcome suggests lessons about how to bring new technology to unfamiliar cultures. The specific examples give credibility. I am surprised by the lack of numbers, certainly in a work based on the Rockefeller archives, showing at least short-term effectiveness of the campaign, although the author states such would be misleading. The writing is lively and accessible, and overall the book is well done.
Polak, Paul. Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2008. Pp. xi + 232. Illus. Hardcover, $18.45.
Paul Polak asks: “What makes poor people poor? And what can be done about their poverty?” One part of the answer is appropriate agricultural technology. A Nepalese farmer answered the question “Why are you poor?” with “I am poor because I have not found a way to earn more money.” This farmer moved out of poverty when he gained access to drip-irrigation and grew cucumbers, which he sold out-of-season. Another story describes a farmer in Zambia who bought a treadle pump, irrigated a full acre, and doubled his income. Engineering and entrepreneurship get equal attention. The “Don’t bother” trilogy gives some of the flavor of the book: 1) If you haven’t had a good conversation with at least twenty-five poor people before you start designing, don’t bother. 2) If what you design won’t at least pay for itself in the first year, don’t bother. 3) If you don’t think you can sell at least a million units at an unsubsidized price to poor customers after the design process is completed, don’t bother. Some design challenges presented not related to irrigation are: 1) a $15 scythe for harvesting rice, corn, and wheat; 2) $1500 and a $5000 steam distillation units for essential oils; 3) a $50 gasifier for generating even heat; 4) low-cost solar dryers to dry tomatoes and banana chips for high-end markets. Some readers may have seen the “Design for the Other 90%” exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York. The exhibit was based on Polak’s ideas. Polak seems to have had much success with his approach, and his ideas seem entirely reasonable, although not fashionable in the “Development” community. A friend from the business world said he found the ideas sensible and comfortable. Needless to say, there is much inspiration here for engineers who want to change the world. I admired Out of Poverty very much.
Ruddiman, William. Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,2005. Pp. xiv + 202. Illus. Hardcover, $24.95.
Humans have been affecting climate for at least 8,000 years, although the effect has been much greater in the last 200 years. Global warming is caused by gases entrapped in the atmosphere, and the most important contributors are methane and carbon dioxide. The amount of methane in the atmosphere, measured by entrapped air in Antarctica ice, increased greatly about 5,000 years ago. The deduced cause was the development of irrigation of rice fields—the rice stalks and weeds decayed, emitting methane. The same ice cores show that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increased about 8,000 years ago. The most likely explanation is the cumulative effect of cutting down forests. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere follows a natural cycle of about 100,000 years—the cause is not clear. The cycle was disrupted about 8,000 years ago, and this disruption probably delayed or avoided another ice age. The general increase in carbon dioxide has been marked by downward wiggles in AD 200-600, in 1300-1400, and in 1500-1750. These dips correlate with major disease outbreaks, particularly bubonic plague, leading to severe drops in population and abandonment of farmland. The industrial era has produced a very large increase in greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide and methane. The earth’s climate responds slowly to changes, so the corresponding warming is still in progress, perhaps half done. Also another industrial era emission is sulphur dioxide, creating aerosols in the atmosphere. These aerosols reflect sunlight so have a cooling effect. Ruddiman proposes several scenarios for how the increased carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration will play out. His opinion, however, is that the most pressing problem facing humans is not global warming but resource depletion. This review does not do justice to the careful science, carefully described. Two chapters deal with the causes of ice ages—mainly variations in the earth’s orbit and variations in the earth’s tilt angle. From another perspective, the book is a compelling elucidation of a scientific mystery—an exciting example of how a scientist reasons. From a third perspective, the book describes a scientist’s experience in proposing a new theory and gaining gradual acceptance.
Stibel, Jeffrey. Wired For Thought: How the Brain is Shaping the Future of the Internet. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 2009. Pp. xxxi + 203. Hardcover, $29.95.
The Internet is a brain. It learns. It improves itself. It is gradually gaining the ability to think. Pictures of the network of neurons in the brain and of the network of computers in the Internet are remarkably similar. The human brain in fact is “a lump of axons and dendrites and other carbon-based stuff”—not very amazing chemistry. Because the brain is not made of anything special, people can create something similar. Human thought is much messier than computer processing—the mind thinks by looping around a problem rather than going straight for an answer. The power of the brain is in recognizing patterns, not doing flawless calculations. Intuition, based on this pattern recognition ability, has great survival value for the species. So does a talent for recognizing the most important factor in a complicated situation—Stibel’s example is General Robert E. Lee outfoxing the Union army at Chancellorsville. The argument goes on to show how the Internet, but not an individual computer, performs like a brain. Sites that dominate a niche survive. Evolutionary pressure drives towards more useful site content, as evolutionary pressure forces brains to be more effective. Patterns are recognized in the Internet; so are dominant behaviors. The Internet and the brain are networks. Metcalf’s law argues that the value of a network increases as the square of the number of devices included. So evolution would appear to imply continuous growth, but networks cannot grow limitlessly because connecting everyone to everyone else reduces effectiveness. MySpace allows sexual predators to connect to children. Facebook grows by forming groups. Its network of networks approach seems more promising in the long run and mimics the structure of the brain. Stibel illustrates these ideas about the evolution of the Internet with his own experiences as a successful entrepreneur in the software sphere. He was there as the evolution took place. Many, many ideas are presented in an accessible, friendly style. The book connects brain science, entrepreneurship, software, and the human condition, and is exciting to read.
Strum, Wesley, Joel Genuth, and Ivan Chompalov. Structures of Scientific Collaboration. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007. Pp. xi + 280. Hardcover, $38.00.
A study of the organization of fifty three “big science” physics projects, each a collaboration involving at least three independent organizations. The specific areas were Geophysics, Ground-based Astronomy, Material Sciences, Medical Physics, Space Science, and Particle Physics. The data was collected in the 1990s by a group from the American Institute of Physics. The collaborations fit into four clusters: Bureaucratic, Leaderless, Non-Specialized, and Participatory. The particle physics projects were in the last cluster and were basically the only ones in that cluster, probably because of the technology involved and the corresponding acculturation of graduate students. Except for particle physics, the clusters did not coincide with scientific specialties. Several reasons for collaborating exist, but the important one appears to be access to instrumentation—“the structure of collaboration is best viewed in terms of the practices through which data is acquired.” Besides the issue of who gets to work with the equipment, sharing of data can be problem in a collaboration. The organization of projects must satisfy the needs of the engineers and scientists involved but also the requirements of the participants’ home institutions, which usually have constraints on acceptable structures. The process of starting a collaborative project influences a project throughout its life—success is determined more by the beginning than the end. Larger projects, not surprisingly, had more administrative structure. On the other hand, when the scope of the collaboration is wider, decision-making tends to be more participatory and local. If the scope is wider, probably less micro-management is done. Leadership style and technology are related: technologies that make participants interdependent lead to decentralization of leadership. Trust between participants does not seem to be a determinant of success, although a lack of trust leads to conflict. One determinant of success, though, is funding difficulties at the beginning—projects having difficulties raising funds, but ultimately in doing so succeeding, had more positive final outcomes. Much of the discussion involves “bureaucracy,” used here to mean formal organization, with a hierarchy. The authors point out that the presence of bureaucratic procedures may very well aid in getting the science done, and may give more local autonomy to scientists and engineers in doing their work. It seems evident that collaborations will be more necessary in the future as the scope of significant problems enlarges. Knowing how to plan and manage such projects will be useful, and much insight can be gained from this book. Some of the exposition was slow going for me; perhaps a person trained in the social sciences will have an easier time.
Turkle, Sherry, ed. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, Mass.; The MIT Press, 2007. Illus. Pp. ix + 385. Hardcover, $24.95.
Evocative objects act as “companions to our emotional lives or as provocations to thought.” Thinking with objects is not always well regarded; abstract reasoning is the canonical style in science. The book is a collection of short essays showing the powerof objects, written by thirty four people. A native American axe head evokes “musing on the long ago, long dead people” on the same land as the family farm. A 1964 Ford Falcon makes a graduate student part of the Boston community and allows her, by creating a home page for the car, to participate in the personal and informal side of the web. Eventually she gives the car away and buys a BMW. Other objects are also “transitional”—when Shayna started nursery school her cloth bunny, left behind, becomes able to see through walls and to hear Shayna. A granddaughter packs a recently deceased grandmother’s suitcase with the red cardigan, the white necklace, the pink-and green-flower-painted teacups, and whatever else the two of them need together. Two and a half years later she can barely open the suitcase: memories are fluid, objects are not. In another writing, a kung fu teacher explains that you have to use his jow (liniment). Like the kung fu he teaches and that in the movies, the jow looks the same but it is not, the tradition is part of it. Several essays deal with how a person can feel as one with her/his object— a writer and her laptop. A diabetic writes about interactions with his glucometer; these interactions “define my sense of who I am.” The essays are paired with paragraphs from many people—Erik Erikson, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Jean Piaget to list only the first four. For Turkle these epigraphs are the theory that “defamilarizes” the object. I found many of the epigraphs difficult, perhaps because the context was missing. Turkle contributed the initial and final essay discussing, among other things, why thinking about objects matters and what makes an object evocative. Different essays will undoubtedly be particularly appealing to different people. I found several very moving, and expect I will now think often about evocative objects.