Rescuing Prometheus Thomas P. Hughes Pantheon, New York (1998) Complex technological projects in the past half-century drove development of techniques we now take for granted.  This book describes four seminal projects. Book Review © Dr. Terry J. van der Werff, CMC

We live in a technological age and take many of its marvels for granted.  Yet, mastering the management challenges of monumentally complex technological projects was not a foregone conclusion.

Rescuing Prometheus tells the stories of four such projects, illustrating the rich and productive intertwining of the military-industrial-university complex, as well as describing a world locked in potentially deadly battle between the superpowers, bureaucratic inertia, technological prowess, bull-headed drive, creativity, bruised egos, and political hardball.

SAGE. In the early 1950's M.I.T. led the development of the Semi-automatic Ground Environment air defense project, whose primary outcome was the Whirlwind computer, the first used for interactive information processing and control rather than for strictly computation.  The project popularized the value of summer studies which gathered together bright intellects from a variety of disciplines to focus creatively on a major topic.

ICBM.  The Atlas was the United States' first intercontinental ballistic missile of the 1950's.  Led by General Bernard Schriever of the Air Force and Simon Ramo (the R in TRW), Atlas introduced systems engineering as a management concept for dealing with extraordinarily difficult, unproven technologies and involving hundreds of companies, thousands of scientists and engineers, and scores of thousands of workers.  The Atlas Project was significantly more complex and expensive than the Manhattan Project which produced the atomic bomb during World War II.

CA/T.  Boston's Central Artery/Tunnel is the United States' largest public works construction project and is expected to be finished about 2004.  What distinguishes it from the other three projects profiled in Rescuing Prometheus is the large social, environmental, and political difficulties that must be integrated with immense technical challenges. This, in turn, changes the closed system nature of the other three into an open system, with very active public involvement.

ARPANET.  The explosive growth in the last half decade of the World Wide Web causes us to take the Internet for granted.  (The mere fact you are reading this underscores the point.)  The Internet is a direct lineal descendant of a project initially funded by the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency in the late 1960's.  Direct outcomes led to networked computer systems,flat organizations, and collegial management.

This is not a book you take to bed!  The prose of technical detail, names, systems, and sites at times numbs the senses and would introduce sleep readily.  Still, these histories give us insight into leadership and confidence that new  techniques can and will arise when confronting technological complexities never before encountered, but only through strong-willed, able people.

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