The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Inside Technology) (Paperback)

by Paul N. Edwards (Author) "This book is about computers, as machines and as metaphors, in the politics and culture of Cold War America..." (more)
Key Phrases: United States, Star Wars, Soviet Union (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Edwards traces how computers have emerged as the dominant technology as a direct result of Cold War politics and the defense research it engendered. From the first use of room-size mainframes to coordinate missile systems, Pentagon research aimed toward complete computer control, including the budget-busting and ultimately impractical Strategic Defensive Initiative. Edwards relates how the technolog--which is now so open as to be nearly anarchic--began in strictly enclosed secrecy. The military computer goal of perfect "command, control and communication" systems was understood to mean communication only within a very closed world. Edwards' thesis is that this approach influenced the very structure of our modern computers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
"The Closed World is astonishing. One of the most important books of the 20th century."
—Howard Rheingold, editor, Whole Earth Review

"A fascinating glimpse into the history of computing and a cogent reminder of the extent to which this history continues to inform our vision of the future."
—Grant Kester, The Nation

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 462 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262550288
• ISBN-13: 978-0262550284
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #660,514 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Missing the point?, October 15, 2000

By	Edward G. Nilges "Author, 'Build Your Own .Ne... (Hong Kong, China) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While this is an excellent and sensitive overview of the history of computer science from a critical standpoint, it may miss the essential point.

This is that while the announced intention of Cold War data systems efforts was to indeed provide a logically closed structure that would ensure national security and a narrow form of economic growth (which excluded unions from power), as Edwards himself reveals, these systems in significant ways failed to accomplish their technical goals.

The problem is that people with the traditional liberal suspicion of computers miss either this fact or fail to grasp its significance. Edwards fails to grasp its significance.

What it means is that on the ground, in the apparently highly controlled mainframe computer rooms, a highly "open" and possibly even "green" for of chaos operated as software (in one noted example) bayed at the moon when it mistook the moon for a missile. This chaos was presented as its opposite in a rhetorical trick which conceals the labor, and in some cases the very existence, of software creation.

The troubling fact, invisible to humanists outside the field, is that the upper-level administrators of these systems did not really care that they did not work, as long as the public viewed them as a closed and working system. They'd also prefer to conceal the origins of the software that controls these systems in labor and in writing.

Edwards in the main fails to link this rhetorical sleight-of-hand to C. Wright Mills' work in which the general public is systematically deceived, and a white-collar class creates the tools of its own destruction.

The Sage air defense system did not work and did not, in fact, protect the United States from attack: what protected us from attack was the decision of men to back down from macho and nuclear-armed confrontation, including Eisenhower's decision to not back Britain, France and Israel in 1956's Suez crisis and Nikita Krushchev's decision to back down in 1962 over Cuba.

The real technical illusion is not that the closed world is "better than" the green world. It is to not fully close digital worlds but to present them as closed, and to prevent the rules of their closure from public oversight, and control.