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Please join us next Monday, February 14th, for the first STS colloquium
of the spring term: <br><br>
<br><br>
<font size=5 color="#0000FF"><b>Uncertainties in Technology: Disturbance,
<br>
Interference, and Noise in Early Radio<br><br>
</font><font size=5>Chen-Pang Yeang<br><br>
4:00 p.m., E51-095<br><br>
<br><br>
</b></font>Chen-Pang provided the following abstract for his
talk:<br><br>
Uncertainty is technology's nature. Conceptually satisfying designs
always have<br>
unexpected problems in the real, uncertain world. Why does uncertainty
pose<br>
problems to technology? What are the possible solutions? What are the
broad<br>
implications of these solutions beyond their immediate functions? This
talk<br>
will address such questions from the perspective of telecommunication,
a<br>
technology whose raison d'etre is precisely to control the uncertainty
in<br>
information transfer. I will trace the historical origin of
communication<br>
technology's "fight against uncertainty" by discussing how
radio practitioners<br>
in the early twentieth century dealt with electronic noise,
environmental<br>
disturbance, and man-made interference. The solutions to these
problems<br>
consisted of a wide range of actions: Physicists treated electronic noise
with<br>
probabilistic theories. Engineers handled environmental disturbance
with<br>
extensive measurements that mapped out the interaction between radio
waves and<br>
the environment. Technocrats reduced man-made interference by
enforcing<br>
spectrum-allocation policies with standardization of wireless equipment.
These<br>
episodes point to important historiographical issues--the relationship
between<br>
science and technology, the roles of the environment in engineering
practices,<br>
and regulating technical-social systems. Uncertainty is hence a fruitful
angle<br>
to approach the history of technology. <br><br>
Chen-Pang Yeang is a postdoctoral fellow at the Dibner Institute for the
History<br>
of Science and Technology. He obtained his Ph.D. in the History and
Social Study<br>
of Science and Technology and Sc.D. in Electrical Engineering, both from
MIT, <br>
and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University. He is
currently <br>
working on a monograph about the early radio-wave propagation studies
from <br>
Marconi's trans-oceanic wireless (1898) to the International Geophysical
Year <br>
(1957-8). He is also starting a historical research project on noise. In
addition, <br>
he is involved in MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics'
development of smart antennas <br>
for wireless communication.<br><br>
See you next Monday at 4:00!<br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
Debbie Meinbresse<br>
STS Program, MIT<br>
617-253-4062</body>
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