Discussion Questions

1) SAGE in the History of Computing

a) What was Whirlwind originally supposed to produce? How did its objectives and scope evolve over time?
b) Would you say that the project was well managed?
c) What were its most important technical contributions to computing? How are these technologies used today?

2) SAGE and the Cold War

a) What was the appeal of SAGE to the US military? Were early (circa 1948-50) fears justified?
b) What was the relationship of the Air Force to the other services and the RAND corporation?
c) How does SAGE compare to the more recent plans for a National Missile Defense? (Think in particular about its use of new technologies, the kind of threat it guards against, its political significance, its purpose).
d) What effect did SAGE have on the control structure of US air defense? Was this inevitable?
e) Was SAGE a success? In what senses?

3) What prompted the development of SABRE?

a) In what ways was this a departure from the early (1954-58) use of computers in business administration? Were there any similarities? b) What was it about the airline business that made it a natural candidate for on-line operation? Were such applications common?
c) Are there parallels between this early on-line application and recent use of the Internet by business? What are the most important differences?
d) The book discusses the UPC bar code. What other technologies had to be in place for this to be useful (the answer is not all in the book)?

Key Points to Revise

Resources and Further Reading