[Sci-tech-public] February 14th STS Colloquium. Speaker: Cheng-Pang Yeang

[Debbie Meinbresse]

Please join us next Monday, February 14th, for the first STS colloquium of 
the spring term:



Uncertainties in Technology: Disturbance,
Interference, and Noise in Early Radio

Chen-Pang Yeang

4:00 p.m., E51-095



Chen-Pang provided the following abstract for his talk:

Uncertainty is technology's nature. Conceptually satisfying designs always have
unexpected problems in the real, uncertain world. Why does uncertainty pose
problems to technology? What are the possible solutions? What are the broad
implications of these solutions beyond their immediate functions? This talk
will address such questions from the perspective of telecommunication, a
technology whose raison d'etre is precisely to control the uncertainty in
information transfer. I will trace the historical origin of communication
technology's "fight against uncertainty" by discussing how radio practitioners
in the early twentieth century dealt with electronic noise, environmental
disturbance, and man-made interference. The solutions to these problems
consisted of a wide range of actions: Physicists treated electronic noise with
probabilistic theories. Engineers handled environmental disturbance with
extensive measurements that mapped out the interaction between radio waves and
the environment. Technocrats reduced man-made interference by enforcing
spectrum-allocation policies with standardization of wireless equipment. These
episodes point to important historiographical issues--the relationship between
science and technology, the roles of the environment in engineering practices,
and regulating technical-social systems. Uncertainty is hence a fruitful angle
to approach the history of technology.

Chen-Pang Yeang is a postdoctoral fellow at the Dibner Institute for the 
History
of Science and Technology. He obtained his Ph.D. in the History and Social 
Study
of Science and Technology and Sc.D. in Electrical Engineering, both from MIT,
and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University. He is 
currently
working on a monograph about the early radio-wave propagation studies from
Marconi's trans-oceanic wireless (1898) to the International Geophysical Year
(1957-8). He is also starting a historical research project on noise. In 
addition,
he is involved in MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics'  development of 
smart antennas
for wireless communication.

See you next Monday at 4:00!

Debbie Meinbresse
STS Program, MIT
617-253-4062 
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