Donald A. MacKenzie - Mechanizing Proof: Computing, Risk, and Trust

Cover

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Mechanizing Proof

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Inside Technology

edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, W. Bernard Carlson, and Trevor Pinch

Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet

Charles Bazerman, The Languages of Edison's Light

Marc Berg, Rationalizing Medical Work: Decision Support Techniques and Medical Practices

Wiebe E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change

Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, editors, Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change

Stuart S. Blume, Insight and Industry: On the Dynamics of Technological Change in Medicine

Geoffrey C. Bowker, Science on the Run: Information Management and Industrial Geophysics at Schlumberger, 19201940

Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

Louis L. Bucciarelli, Designing Engineers

H. M. Collins, Artificial Experts: Social Knowledge and Intelligent Machines

Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America

Herbert Gottweis, Governing Molecules: The Discursive Politics of Genetic Engineering in Europe and the United States

Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II

Kathryn Henderson, On Line and On Paper: Visual Representations, Visual Culture, and Computer Graphics in Design Engineering

Eda Kranakis, Constructing a Bridge: An Exploration of Engineering Culture, Design, and Research in Nineteenth-Century France and America

Pamela E. Mack, Viewing the Earth: The Social Construction of the Landsat Satellite System

Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance

Donald MacKenzie, Knowing Machines: Essays on Technical Change

Donald MacKenzie, Mechanizing Proof: Computing, Risk, and Trust

Maggie Mort, Building the Trident Network: A Study of the Enrolment of People, Knowledge, and Machines

Susanne K. Schmidt and Raymund Werle, Coordinating Technology: Studies in the International Standardization of Telecommunications

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Donald MacKenzie

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2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Sabon by Achorn Graphic Services, Inc. on the Miles 33 system and was printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
MacKenzie, Donald A.
Mechanizing proof : computing, risk, and trust / Donald A. MacKenzie.
p. cm. (Inside technology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-13393-8 (HC : alk. paper)
1. Computer systemsReliability. 2. Computers and civilization. I. Title.
II. Series.
QA76.76.R44 M36 2001
004'. 2' 1dc21
2001018687

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The work upon which this book is based was made possible by a series of generous research grants: the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (especially grant R000234031, Studies in the Sociology of Proof, but also grant R00029008, and the Council's Programme on Information and Communication Technologies); the Joint Committee of that Council and the Science and Engineering Research Council (grant GR/H74452); the U.K. Safety Critical Systems Research Programme (GR/J58619); and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; GR/L37953). The final stages of the writing were supported by EPSRC's grant (GR/N13999) to DIRC, the Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration on the Dependability of Computer-Based Systems.

These grants supported several coworkers without whose help I could not have written the book, especially Elona Pelez (whose Ph.D. thesis, drawn on heavily in chapter 2, first sparked my interest in the topic), Maggie Tierney, Tony Dale (who conducted the majority of the interviews drawn on here), and Garrel Pottinger (whose interviews form the basis for chapter 5, and who has kindly allowed me in that chapter to draw upon material from an earlier joint article). Further background interviews were conducted by Dave Aspinall, Savitri Maharaj, Claudio Russo, and Colin Smart. This large body of interview material was transcribed by Antoinette Butler, Jean Goldring, and (with exceptional dedication and skill) Dominic Watt. Moyra Forrest gathered literally hundreds of (sometimes obscure) primary sources, and Barbara Silander heroically word-processed several drafts of the text as well as turning my rough sketches into neat figures. Much of this work was done in Edinburgh University's Research Centre for Social Sciences, with the unstinting support of its directors, Frank Bechhofer and, especially, Robin Williams. My colleagues in the Department of Sociology shouldered the burden when the research grants permitted me time free of