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Fishing in the black box Rosenberg, N 'Inside the black box: tech- nology and economics' Cambridge Universi- tY Press, Cambridge, UK (1982) 304pp

This is a collection of scholarly essays produced on a variety of themes in whcih technology is linked in some way with social theory or matters of practical politics. A par- dcular value lies in the quality of treatment of the themes that enables a reader to gain easy access to the relevant literature.

The first themes deal with the anture of technical progress and in- dude a review of the principal writ- ings on the subject, with particular emphasis upon econometrics and the New Economic historians. In another section, Marx is identified as an important analyst who exploited the significance of capital goods manufacture. In the growth of the American economy, interdepend- ence between brands of technology leads to a system view of technologic- al development. From this, views are set out regarding the cumulative impact of small improvements. The effect of fuel and energy supply characteristics is described particu- larly with respect to the rise of iron and steel manufacture, with a later look at the aluminium industry.

In a different direction, attention is put upon the consequences of judgments about the rate of tech- nological change. Learning by doing is examined in some detail, covering learning by the production of scien- tific knowledge, the integration of knowledge in new design and the development of successive applica- tions of new designs. Users them- selves may feed back their know- ledge into fresh designs. Learning by doing has been a ma;,,r underpinning of the industries based on aircraft, electric power generation, telecom- munications and computers. The commercial and governmental aspects of aircraft are also pursued.

Very large scale integration of chips provides a basis for discussing the difficulty of predicting cost reduc- tions or identifying the direction of new uses.

Some old and favourite themes are taken up afresh. Does science have an independent trajectory? Is tech- nology but the application of scien- tific knowledge? This latter question is particularly worked over in the light of research undertaken at the Bell Laboratories. What triggers in- novation is reworked critically, emphasising the differences between well-known research studies rather than their similarities. This, in con- tradiction to other essays is a notable piece of academic hatchet-work. In attempting to enter the black box, a can of worms is discovered and simple prescriptions for governmen- tal or other policy have thrown into doubt. However, proposed interven- tions discussed at this point deal with innovation and not with diffusion. D e s i g n c o n s i d e r a t i o n s en t e r throughout the book, whether in dealing with 'stretch' in aircraft, optimality in computer software, im- provement engineering or new con- cept generation, although the author tends to underplay the phenomena of design work, partly because there is little published source material.

Sydney Gregory

Basic design Zunde, J M 'Design procedures' Longman Technician Series, London, UK (1982) 227pp £4.95

This book is intended for the sylla- bus requirements of the Technician Education Council's Unit U77/440 Design Procedures, Level 4, which is part of the programme of studies for a Higher Certificate or Diploma in Building Studies. It is therefore

aimed primarily at trainee architect- ural technicians, but it could well be of some use to building students, first-year architectural students and perhaps some A-level design stu- dents.

The author is an architect, and she has related many of the examples in the book to a simple design project for a factory. Topics covered include aesthetics and design methodology as well as considerations of economic, technical and functional constraints on building design, and information storage and retrieval.

The strength of the book is its breadth of coverage---albeit at a very basic level--of the many aspects involved in building design.

NigelCross

Evaluation in information design Easterby, Ronald and Zwaga (eds) "In- formation design: the design and evaluation of signs and printed material" yohn Wiley, UK (1984) 588pp £46.00 I S B N 0 471104310

In 1978 a large gathering of applied psychologists and a smattering of graphic designers took part in a conference on the visual presentation of information. It contributed to the gradual awakening of the field of information design.

As we move into the information age, we are becoming increasingly aware of the problems created by poor information design. The cur- rent boom in computing has high- lighted the problem. Display termin- al and software designers are in- creasingly becoming conscious of user needs; they are realizing that even the most exciting programs and applications can flounder because of poor presentation.

The publication of this book, though six years after the confer- ence, is a timely contribution to the subject. The original conference papers have been reworked into

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