Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012 (Inside Technology)
This well-researched, well-argued book provides insight into the history of American missile defense systems and the complex software that controls them. While this is an interesting and important topic in its own right, the book engages an even broader theme: how experts form judgments about complex technological solutions to societal problems, how they make their arguments politically persuasive, and what role these experts play in modern society. Historians and policy scholars of software, physics, and other complex technological systems will find much of interest in this volume.(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.(Gregg Herken, Emeritus Professor of History, University of California; author ofBrotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Legacies of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller)Based on extensive new research, Slayton's groundbreaking book dissects the long-running debates over missile defense. Her analysis of how scientists make arguments persuasive and authoritative is important for understanding not just the history of today's military systems, but also the very ability of these systems to function at all.(Gabrielle Hecht, Professor of History, University of Michigan; author ofBeing 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 identity is part of Slayton's point -- performed for one another and for policy-makers and the public, while using those performances to forward the individual and community objectives.(Science)In addition to providing new insights into the debate over missile defense, Slayton raises valuable questions about the broader interaction between scientific expertise and advocacy.(Foreign Affairs)