How often we hear the twin laments: “They say the computer system can’t do what I need to do,” and “I want a computer that does what I mean and not what I say.” The first comment addresses what the authors call responsibilities: “a way of building a bridge between the social discourse of responsibilities for tasks and ... the architectural or engineering discourse of making an artifact that assists a person in performing these tasks.”

The second statement addresses one aspect of dependability. Dewsbury and Dobson state: “fault tolerance is intended to preserve the delivery of correct service in the presence of active faults.” This unique consideration of social and human factors in designing responsibility and dependability into complex systems makes this treatise appropriate for system engineers, social scientists, and graduate students.

The presented study comes from a six-year Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Dependability (DIRC) project, funded by the United Kingdom (UK) Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Dewsbury and Dobson state that there are three discourses: the discourse of technology, the discourse of governance, and the discourse of participating. Uniting these discourses are the concepts of responsibility and dependability.

The textual discussion is divided into three units, of three chapters each. First, philosophical and social aspects are discussed; second, modeling is reviewed; and finally, new methods of modeling are examined. Dependability development combines fault prevention, fault tolerance, fault removal, and fault forecasting. Combined with this, the text addresses responsibility modeling.

The chapter “Responsibility in Practice” contains interesting examples of typical design-meeting conversations, which may sound quite familiar to many readers. A chapter addressing the Labroke Grove rail inquiry (a 1999 train crash) illustrates the complex interactions in a sociotechnical system, and provides a unique case history.

Responsibility modeling is discussed in detail, and useful tools are presented for the analysis and technical design of complex systems. Another case history, the London ambulance service disaster (a system failure in 1992), provides a concrete illustration to complete this unit.

The capstone unit, describing new methods, reviews six forms of responsibility vulnerability and methods of addressing them, as well as ways to model these issues. The concluding chapter uses the techniques to determine the lines of responsibility in producing this book and the utility of modeling techniques.

The book is an appropriate length and contains a good index and list of references; however, unlike a traditional textbook, it has no exercises or problems at the end of each chapter. I recommend this book and hope that the authors will continue their study of this significant topic.