Rational Accidents: Reckoning with Catastrophic Technologies (Inside Technology)

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Purpose, Scope, and Structure
	Purpose
	Scope
	Structure
	Chapter Breakdown
		Part I
		Part II
		Part III
		Part IV
I. The Aviation Paradox
	1. Catastrophic Technologies: The Rise of Reliability as a Variable of Consequence
		1.1 Introduction
			A Near-Miss
			Betting on Technology
		1.2. Catastrophic Technologies
			A New Relationship to Failure
		1.3 Governing Catastrophic Technologies
			The Primacy of Reliability
			Objective and Authoritative
	2. Finitism and Failure: On the Logical Implausibility of Ultrahigh Reliability
		2.1 On the Limits of Objectivity
			Reason to Doubt
			A Finitist Cosmology
		2.2 The Problem of Reliability
			Uncertainty and Efficacy
			An Unconventional Variable
			Reliability and Catastrophic Technologies
			Epistemologically Implausible
	3. The Aviation Paradox: On the Impossible Reliability of Jetliners
		3.1 Undeniably Reliable
			A Triumph of Mundanity
			Knowably Reliable
			Safety in Data
			Trust in Numbers?
		3.2 A Paradoxical Achievement
			Problem and Promise
II. Confronting Ultrahigh Reliability
	4. Organizing Aviation Safety: Reliability Requirements and Logics
		4.1 Rules and Institutions
			Type-Certification
			Predictive and Positivist
		4.2 Reliability Targets
			Two Numbers
			Figures of Merit?
		4.3 Practical Dilemmas
			The Challenge of Ambiguity
	5. When the Chick Hits the Fan: Testing and the Problem of Relevance
		5.1 Bird-Strike Testing
			A Persistent Hazard
			Boosting Roosters
		5.2 Representativeness
			The Problem of Relevance
			“Consistent with Service”
			Recreating Strikes
			Meaningful Differences
		5.3 Reproducibility
			Narrowing of Vision
			Rubber Chickens
		5.4 An Endemic Dilemma
			“Not All the way”
	6. The Sum of All Parts: Modeling Reliability with Redundancy
		6.1 System-Level Safety
			“Impossible” Failures
			Definitions and Ambiguities
			Reliability Squared
		6.2 Messy Practice
			Imperfect Representations
		6.3 Obdurate Uncertainty
			An Imperfect Tool
	7. Rational Accidents: On Finitism’s Catastrophic Implications
		7.1 Error Plane
			737-Cabriolet
			Nested Causes
		7.2 The Limits of Control
			Failures of Foresight
			Normal Accidents
			Rational Accidents
		7.3 Aloha Revisited
			Multiple Site Damage
			Dark Arts
			Duhem-Quine
		7.4 Implications
			Knowledge and Design
III. Mastering Ultrahigh Reliability
	8. Paradox Resolved: Transcending the Limits of Tests and Models
		8.1 Fly-By-Wire
			Digital Middleman
			Defying Uncertainty
		8.2 Recursive Practice
			Reliability Follows Failure
		8.3 Permissive Service
			Born of Adversity
		8.4 Design Stability
			Innovative Restraint
		8.5 Paradox Resolved
			The Ratchet of Ultrahigh Reliability
			Misrepresentations
	9. Design Stability Revisited: Context, Caveats, Composites, and Concorde
		9.1 A Controversial Notion
			Undeniably Radical
		9.2 The Composite Revolution
			Dark Materials
			Composites in Context
			Dangerously Innovative?
		9.3 Innovation Untethered
			Military Adventurism
			Concorde
			Concordski
	10. Safety Costs: The Structural Foundations of Ultrareliable Design
		10.1 An Organizational Anomaly
			Good Behavior
			Safety Second
		10.2 Choosing Stability
			Economic Sacrifice
		10.3 Regulating Stability
			An Intuitive Notion
			Direct Oversight
			Second-Order Oversight
			Capture
		10.4 Costs Revisited
			Accidents and Incentives
			Self-Interest
	11. Incentives in Action: On Deficient 737s and Neglected Survivability
		11.1 Bad Practices?
			A Controversial Notion
		11.2 Compromised By Design
			Two Disasters
			Exemplary Failures
			Irrational Behaviors
		11.3 Crash Survivability
			Lost Survivors
			Safety Second
			Regulation and Finitism
			Survivability and Incentives
		11.4 Positivist Pathologies
			Moving Forward
IV. Reckoning with Catastrophic Technologies
	12. Burdens of Proof: The Hidden Costs of Positivism
		12.1 A Theater of Objectivity
			Pretense and Humbug
		12.2 Performing Objectivity
			“White-Boxing”
			Necessary Fictions?
		12.3 The Price of Performance
			Presentation Costs
			Contradictions
		12.4 Mitigated Consequences
			No Harm, No Foul?
	13. The Myth of Mastery: On the Underappreciated Limits of Technological Ambition
		13.1 False Promises
			Technological Mastery
			Underappreciated
			False Equivalence
		13.2 The Perils of Certainty
			Technologies of Hubris
	14. Fukushima Revisited: Reaping the Whirlwinds of Certainty
		14.1 Governing Reactors
			Woefully Unprepared
			Practically Unthinkable
		14.2 Jetliners and Reactors
			Parallel Structures
			Underlying Differences
			Fundamentally Unsafe
		14.3 Fukushima’s Failing
			Fundamental Errors
Notes
	Introduction
	Chapter 1
	Chapter 2
	Chapter 3
	Chapter 4
	Chapter 5
	Chapter 6
	Chapter 7
	Chapter 8
	Chapter 9
	Chapter 10
	Chapter 11
	Chapter 12
	Chapter 13
	Chapter 14
References
Index