The ninth of Ten things in my class on science, technology and design - [link]

"Aircraft don't fly - airlines do"

The future of the megamachine. Designing aircraft is actually designing military and airline systems.

Even the human is still embedded in the most modern of megamachines. Technology progresses in tandem with the cyborg leviathan.

Surely the design of a military aircraft has nothing to do with society and culture - it all comes down to engines and aerodynamics?

Key point here is that major engineering projects always require coordination across a range of heterogeneous fields that are usually taken to have nothing to do with science - and they often fail as a result.

The strong argument is that science and technology would not happen or exist without these heterogeneous networks, connections between hybrid forms.

Ilan Kroo, in his interview (coming here soon) about supersonic aircraft design shows how aircraft design has followed a very particular path also because of the perceived uncertainties in the networked associations that design, make and fly aircraft. But now we seem to be on the verge of a revolution in aircraft design because of fundamental changes in the way connections may be made through these networks - new kinds of simulation, ways of thinking of design (genetic algorithms) and new metaphors taken from biology (swarms and micro aircraft). These are examples of creative thinking operating through "cross-overs" (see also the computer mourse).

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Readings and Resources

Download
ViewThe Life and Death of an Aircraft.pdf

Additional Readings:

Here is John Law and Vicky Singleton on the relationships between technology engineering and society

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/technology_and_culture/v041/41.4law.html

Download
ViewJohn-Law.pdf

They are partly responsing to this negative review by Eric Schatzberg of Law's work on the TSR2 military aircraft project (cited in our blibiography)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/technology_and_culture/v045/45.2schatzberg.html

Download
ViewSchatzberg-on-Law.pdf

see also Bruno Latour on the failed French rapid transport system - Aramis

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/reviews/LATARA_R.html

here is a good general comment of the context of this kind of work in science and technology studies - from the EASST

de Vries on Latour and Collins in 1995