Everyone uses simulation these days, Autocad being a prime example. I’m particularly interested in it because safety analysis of nuclear reactors involves massive multi-branching computer programs, a kind of simulation I guess, called PSAs (Probablistic Safety Analyses). As well, reactor operators, like airline pilots, practise (if that’s the word, train might be a better term) in simulators. I wonder, is simulation ‘accurate’? What are the risks?
Sherry Turkle, an MIT sociologist most known for The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, doesn’t really address these issues in Simulation and Its Discontents, but instead interviews (and some of her students do the same in separate essays) professionals in fields as varied as architecture, biology, engineering and physics, about their use of computer code to assist in analysis, visualization and design. Her examination spans from the 1980s until now, and I was surprised to find that many of the same issues crop up now as did back then, when using computers was relatively new. Turkle’s observations are not jaw-dropping – simulation is becoming ubiquitous, some folks love it, others are worried and prefer more ‘hands-on’ efforts – but I enjoyed the thoughtfulness and eloquence of experts from so many different disciplines. Most interesting were the nuclear weapons designers and makers, for simulation is the one and only way they can test new devices, ever since physical nuke testing ceased (in America in 1992). Turkle concludes obliquely, as is her style, thus: ‘We have seen what simulation seems to want – through our immersion, to propose itself as proxy for the real.’ But the pleasure in Simulation and Its Discontents is not in its analysis but in its survey of introspective practitioners.