In this eye-opening book, author Lloyd J. Dumas argues that our capacity for developing ever more powerful technologies and the unavoidable fallibility of both machine and man will lead us towards a disaster of an unprecedented scale.Most of us assume that those in charge can always find a way to control any technology mankind creates, no matter how powerful. But in a world of imperfect human beings who are prone to error, emotion, and sometimes to malevolent behavior, this could be an arrogant—and disastrous—assumption. This book is filled with compelling, factual stories that illustrate how easy it is for situations to go terribly wrong, despite our best efforts to prevent any issue. The author is not advocating an anti-technology "return to nature," nor intending to highlight the marvels of our high-tech world. Instead, the objective is to reveal the potential for disaster that surrounds us in our modern world, elucidate how we arrived at this predicament, explain the nature and ubiquity of human fallibility, expose why proposed "solutions" to these Achilles heels cannot work, and suggest alternatives that could thwart human-induced technological disasters.
Lloyd J. Dumas is a social scientist and engineer.
List of TablesAcknowledgmentsPart I: Threatening Ourselves1 Human Fallibility and the Proliferation of Dangerous Technologies2 Dangerous Technologies and the Terrorist ThreatPart II: What Could Go Wrong?3 Losing Control (of Dangerous Materials)4 Accidents Do HappenAppendix Tables: Major Accidents Related to Weapons of Mass Destruction5 Accidental War with Weapons of Mass DestructionPart III: Why It Can Happen Here: Understanding the Human Factor6 Substance Abuse and Mental Illness7 The Character of Work; the Conditions of LifePart IV: "Solutions" That Do Not Work8 Seeking Safety in Numbers: The Reliability of Groups9 Making Technology Foolproof10 Computers Instead of PeoplePart V: Finding Solutions That Do Work11 Judging Risk12 Escaping the Trap: Four Steps for Preventing DisasterIndex
Recommended. Public and academic undergraduate library collections.