class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide # War, Technology & Innovation ## Nomograms ### Jack McDonald ### 2019-11-12 --- class: inverse # Opening Discussion .question[ Do you think the job that you do (or aim to do as a career) is susceptible to automation or replacement by machine? Why? Why not? ] ??? Notes for the discussion Link to images? --- # Lecture Outline .pull-left[ - Technology and the Self - From Cyborgs to Cybernetics - War Beyond Human Comprehension ] .pull-right[ .medium[ Options for next term: - Course stays the same (default) - Seminar: Technology and Remote Warfare - Based on my book, _Enemies Known and Unknown_ - Seminar: Strategy and Technology - Based on Thomas G. Mahnken and Joe Maiolo's _Strategic Studies_ - Seminar: Technology and Military Institutions - Based on Thomas G. Mahnken's _Technology and the American Way of War Since 1945_ - Seminar: Military Innovation - Based on Stephen P. Rosen's _Winning the Next War_] ] ??? Weekly Course Admin Notes go here --- class: inverse # Part 1: Technology and the Self ??? /// --- # Cyborgs .pull-left[ > Late-twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally-designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Donna Haraway, _A Manifesto for Cyborgs_ ] .pull-right[ The tool as an extension of self, or the tool as self? Convergence of technologies in 20th century highlight fuzzy border between humans and technology New ways of thinking about technology emerge (bioethics, technology ethics) ] ??? Haraway quote p.5 --- # Computation and Human Capability .pull-left[ Tools as a member of necessary and sufficient conditions for action Speed, efficiency and reliability of calculation Key question: if a tool increases the speed of finding a result 10x, does it count as necessary? ] .pull-right[   ] ??? /// --- # Why Do You Need Nomograms? .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[ Pre-computation of results Solving engineering problems prior to the era of cheap (graphical) computation When you can't rely upon a computer ] ??? /// --- # Nomograms and Early Electronic Computers > the Russians hold that computers still remain vulnerable to electronic interference (e.g., from the electromagnetic pulse [EMP] generated by a them-nuclear explosion) or rough handling. Consequently, a whole series of means of tactical calculation are still being produced by _Voenizdat_ in pamphlets and manuals in the form of equations, nomograms (nomograph) and calculation proformae. Christopher N. Donnelly, _The Soviet Use of Military History for Operational Analysis_ (1986!!!) ??? p.264 --- # Why Study Nomograms? .pull-left[ > Graphs have become such an important tool for arranging and analyzing data that we can hardly conceive of a science getting along without them, and yet the entire Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century took place without graphs. Thomas L. Hankins, _Blood, Dirt, and Nomograms_ ] .pull-right[  ] ??? Hankins quote p.52 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/237474.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Ae539c0ebdf24624888024e1127f26852 --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion .question[Are you still _you_ without your mobile phone?] ??? /// --- class: inverse # Part 2: From Cyborgs to Cybernetics ??? /// --- # Government Information Processing .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[ .medium[ > The Civil Service was a general-purpose “machine” governed by a code. The stored-program computer is a general-purpose machine governed by a code. Is this similarity a coincidence, or is there a profound connection? I think that the computer is indeed a materialization of bureaucratic action, but the connection between the two is far from simple. Jon Agar, _The Government Machine_ ] ] ??? /// --- # Operational Research .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[  ] ??? /// --- # Cybernetics .pull-left[ > modern automatic machines such as the controlled missile, the proximity fuse, the automatic door opener, the control apparatus for a chemical factory... possess sense organs; that is, receptors for messages coming from the outside. Norbert Weiner, _The Human Use of Human Beings_ ] -- .pull-right[  "the human use of human beings" ] ??? /// --- # General Purpose Computers .pull-left[  .medium[ > Framing the ENIAC story as a case study of the mechanization of female labor, it would be hard to argue that de-skilling accompanied mechanization. Jennifer S. Light, _When Computers Were Women_ ] ] .pull-right[  ] ??? /// --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion .question[How could you define/characterise the impact of computation on war/warfare?] ??? /// --- class: inverse # Part 3: War Beyond Human Comprehension ??? /// --- # Calculation and Prediction .pull-left[  Aristotle didn't _quite_ get physics right... ] .pull-right[  ] ??? /// --- # Sensing .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[ Picture stolen from Steve Blank's [_The Secret History of Silicon Valley_](https://steveblank.com/secret-history/) Intentional human manipulation of electromagnetic spectrum gives rise to electronic warfare. - Intangible domain of war - Raises key question: what is a domain, anyway? - Another question: how do you conceptualise conflict in an intangible domain? ] ??? /// --- # Speed Kills .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[ There are a near-infinite variety of military acronyms that build from C2 (Command & Control) to C4ISR, etc. Data in favour of "practice precedes theory" - SAGE & problems of nuclear C2 Computers and communication systems now indispensable aspect of warfighting/planning ] ??? /// --- # Control .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[  ] ??? /// --- # Managing Complexity .left-column[ Will computers ever be able to figure the world out better than we can? Will we be able to understand them? ] .right-column[  ] ??? ///