Two Words, One Answer.
Mad Mad
 The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs $26.99 A number of years ago for an online encyclopedia, I wrote a definition for something rather mysterious called "DARPA" (and then another definition for its earlier name, "ARPA"). Most people familiar with IT history know that this U.S. government agency was the instigator of what we have come to know as the Internet. But few of us have known much else. Now, with Michael Belfiore's new book, I was able to learn just how important the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is. Since the agency's projects are typically secret, the author shares with us the challenges he faced in gaining access to the information the agency was willing to reveal. Because the projects are farmed out and scattered geographically, the book also reads somewhat like a science travelog. And this is what we learn: even though their primary mission is to serve the U.S. military, DARPA and the people they hire are responsible for perhaps a third of the technological breakthroughs that change our world. Belfiore takes us into the laboratories and workshops where artificial arms are being developed with microdevices implanted in existing muscle that communicate wirelessly with chips in the prosthetic, where robots are being built that may do life-saving operations on the wounded as they are being transported to hospitals, and where vehicles with visual systems can move without a human driver. From DARPA came the stealth aircraft that changed politics as well as warfare; today, DARPA is working on hypersonic aircraft that can travel at many times the speed of sound, perhaps someday available for civilian transport. Work on reducing the size of batteries for soldiers in the field and for solar resupply is leading to blends of material that will convert the sun's energy to electrical energy much more efficiently than at present. Non-food bio-fuels are being developed as a substitute for petroleum. All projects that, while immediately addressed to solutions for the military, portend benefits for everyone. In writing the book, Belfiore interviewed many of the companies and people who work for DARPA, all of whom seem to sense the importance of their work for the future. The reader also learns where scientific and technological breakthroughs come from and why so many of them come from DARPA. Both private industry and university researchers tend to be forced to invent for the short term. DARPA's project managers while driven to come up with solutions that are urgently needed are also allowed to take the chance to fail and to entertain bigger leaps of the imagination. For anyone interested in what wonders DARPA will bring us, this is the book to read. |
|
