Engineering Practice & Failure
The professional and human side — where most catastrophes originate.
9 topics · 4 curated works
Topics
Curated reading
4Start here
No prior grounding assumed.
- BookTo Engineer Is HumanHenry Petroski, 1985
Structural failure is the primary engine of engineering knowledge; success teaches far less than collapse.
- ReportAppendix F: Personal Observations on the Reliability of the ShuttleRichard Feynman, 1986· ≈10 pages· Free
Management estimated failure probability a thousandfold better than engineers did; reality cannot be fooled by public relations.
- BookThe Design of Everyday ThingsDon Norman, 1988
When people misuse an object the fault is usually the design: affordances and feedback do more than instructions ever will.
Then
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
- BookNormal AccidentsCharles Perrow, 1984
In tightly coupled, complexly interactive systems, catastrophic failure is a structural property rather than an anomaly.
Also covered elsewhere
This subject genuinely sits in more than one domain. These fields approach the same ground with different methods.