FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of
Programmers, Managers, and Defense Dollars: The Contrary Networking of "Software Engineering"
"I think that, by and large, the managers wouldn't know a
good technique if it hit them in the face." The prominent computer
scientist Alan Perlis spoke these words at a second NATO-sponsored Software
Engineering conference in 1969. He underscored a conflict that would persist in
the decade that followed that ill-tempered meeting, as computer professionals
organized in the name of "software engineering," many sponsored by the U.S. defense
department. Yet software cost overruns are frequent, and glitches occasionally
turn deadly, leading many to argue that "software engineering" is not yet
worthy of the name.
How should we understand the emergence of software engineering: the agendas of
its proponents, sources of controversy, and its relationship to diverse defense
department interests, including security, reliability, and timeliness, and
costs? This chapter-in-progress addresses this question using both qualitative
historical materials and social network data. The Defense Department's interest
in software research was nurtured by budgetary cuts that followed anti-war
protests in the early 1970, making economics a dominant, if controversial theme
in "software engineering" research. Debates about the meaning and direction of
software engineering often invoked binary divisions, between managers and
technical people, industrialists and academics, pragmatists and theoreticians.
After describing these debates from the ground up, I use network analysis to
provide bird's eye view: to what extent were commonly evoked dualisms reflected
in practices of publication, and how did this change as the field became
institutionalized? More broadly, can network analysis contribute meaningfully
to a historical account employing "thick description," and if so how?
Rebecca Slayton is a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Stanford University and a CISAC affiliate. In 2004-2005 she was a CISAC science fellow. Her research examines how technical judgments are generated, taken up, and given significance in international security contexts. She is currently working on a book which uses the history of the U.S. ballistic missile defense program to study the relationships between and among technology, expertise, and the media. Portions of this work have been published in journals such as History and Technology and have been presented at academic conferences. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2004 she completed an NSF-funded project entitled Public Science: Discourse about the Strategic Defense Initiative, 1983-1988.
As a physical chemist, she developed ultrafast laser experiments in condensed matter systems and published several articles in physics journals. She also received the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship in 2000, and has worked as a science journalist for a daily paper and for Physical Review Focus. She earned her doctorate in chemistry from Harvard University in 2002.
Eric Roberts, after receiving his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1980, taught at Wellesley College from 1980-85, where he chaired the Computer Science Department. From 1985-90, he was a member of the research staff at Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, California, where he conducted computer science research, focusing on programming tools for multiprocessor architectures. In September 1990, Roberts joined the Stanford faculty, where he is now Professor of Computer Science and the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.
From 1990 to 2002, Professor Roberts was Associate Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Computer Science. In that capacity, he was the principal architect of Stanford’s introductory programming sequence, which for many years held the distinction of being the largest course at Stanford. He has also written four computer science textbooks that are used at many colleges and universities throughout the world. His research focuses on computer science education, particularly for underserved communities. From 1998 to 2005, Roberts was Principal Investigator for the Bermuda Project, which developed the computer science curriculum for Bermuda’s public secondary schools.
CISAC Conference Room
Rebecca Slayton
Slayton’s research and teaching examine the relationships between and among risk, governance, and expertise, with a focus on international security and cooperation since World War II. Slayton’s current book project, Shadowing Cybersecurity, examines the historical emergence of cybersecurity expertise. Shadowing Cybersecurity shows how efforts to establish credible expertise in corporate, governmental, and non-governmental contexts have produced varying and sometimes conflicting expert practices. Nonetheless, all cybersecurity experts wrestle with the irreducible uncertainties that characterize intelligent adversaries, and the fundamental inability to prove that systems are secure. The book shows how cybersecurity experts have paradoxically gained credibility by making threats and vulnerabilities visible, while acknowledging that more always remain in the shadows.
Slayton’s first book, Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012 (MIT Press, 2013), shows how the rise of a new field of expertise in computing reshaped public policies and perceptions about the risks of missile defense in the United States. In 2015, Arguments that Count won the Computer History Museum Prize. In 2016, Slayton was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER grant for her project “Enacting Cybersecurity Expertise.” In 2019, Slayton was also a recipient of the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, for her NSF CAREER project.