Torchships and Terabytes

My education is scientific and technical. I write computer software for a living. A big part of the reason that I keep showing up for work is that I get to play with the newest, coolest programming language tools and techniques. And I get paid for it! I don’t know how or why, but I know, as sure as I know anything, that I’m going to love my next cell phone more than I love my current Android phone (which I love more than the previous flip phone).

But…I don’t always think a clever gadget is always the solution to a problem.

There’s a science fiction short story, perhaps you’ve read it, entitled The Cold Equations. Briefly, a couple of centuries in the future, the domain of humankind is expanding across interstellar space. There are faster-than-light interstellar cruisers, but they can’t afford to stop for every little delivery. So they sometimes drop off a minimal configuration delivery craft. The complication, for story purposes, is that sometimes there are stowaways, but there is never enough enough fuel loaded in the delivery ship to land anything but the pilot and the cargo. So stowaways – even an innocent teenage girl just trying to make a surprise visit to her brother on a frontier world – have to be jettisoned immediately upon discovery.

In the story, the pilot is given a “blaster” to aid in showing the stowaway the airlock door. That’s one type of engineering solution. Critics have suggested others, ones that make killing the stowaway less of an imperative. Some would add enough emergency fuel so that the stowaway can be accommodated. Others suggest some kind of stowaway mass detector, designed to prevent launch with unaccounted for mass. Still others want to put locks on doors to restricted areas, vice the warning signs that are present in the story. (Whether these suggestions come out of a sentimental desire to save cute, vulnerable girls or larger ethical concerns, I’ll leave up to your own judgment.)

All of these would certainly work. But why not just add a step to the pre-flight checklist:

Inspect supply closet [where stowaways seem to invariably hide] for stowaway; place any discovered stowaway in the custody of the ship Master at Arms before launch.

Sometimes the solution of a problem is no further away than an intelligent procedure change or addition.

In real life we often run into the same kind of choice. No, you wise guys out there, not whether or not to teach college coeds how to breath vacuum — should we look to a technological solution for a problem, or can we just make a policy and procedure change that serves the same purpose?

In the late Eighties and early Nineties, there was a minor panic in the hospital community over the abduction of infants from post-natal care areas. Infant security awareness was heightened. New policies and procedures were put in place. New security equipment was installed.

Now, some of the new equipment was justified. Cameras at entrances to care areas and in public places helped identify abductors and recover infants they had taken. (As a security system analyst, I was personally involved in the post-mortem of one such incident.) Putting alarms on all fire exits kept abductors from sneaking in through back doors.

But there was one engineering solution that probably did more harm than good. This was the introduction of infant tagging systems, sometimes known as “baby LoJack”. These involved placing inventory control tags on the babies (usually a bracelet on the ankle) and installing tag detection portals on all entrances to infant care areas. If you’re thinking this sounds too much like retail inventory control technology, well…that’s where the technology came from, including many of the original vendors.

In talking with health care security professionals, I’ve heard that such systems are expensive, far from foolproof or fail safe, and, perhaps worst of all, they cause people to think that they can abdicate their human responsibilities to machines. When investigating system malfunctions, I’ve actually heard nurses say, ”Well, I put the tag on the infant,” as if that alone was sufficient. Nobody accounted for whether or not the tag was functioning properly, whether the monitoring portals were working, or whether the computer control system was working properly. In fact, In my experience, the procedures necessary to make sure such systems are doing their job are at least as complex, and require at least as much human care, as any pure policy & procedure approach to the problem.

But these technologies develop a momentum all of their own. They are installed and used — to the degree that they are properly used — in order to mitigate legal liability in the case of an abduction. They are advertised to the actively parenting public as a service distinction. Their existence is used as evidence of meeting industry standards (albeit merely de facto ones) during hospital accreditation surveys. Even if a security manager and hospital administration wanted to avoid such a solution, making their reasons clear to all of the concerned public and professional groups would be a tough job.

So, if now or in the future you are involved in a technology vs. technique decision, please remember that technology doesn’t always have to win. But be prepared to face the objections of those who believe in technology over people.