Man and Machine

One can make the argument that advancements in technology have made life that much easier for all mankind. One could also then make the argument that technology has been detrimental to one thing in particular and that's the human mind. I say this because over the past few months there have been several accidents which have been attributable to human error in the sense that because humans didn't fully understand what feedback they were being given, there was confusion with often deadly results.

Take for example the Metro accident in Washington, DC last week. According to early reports, the computerized system which the train operators oversee, usually adjusts speed and brake systems based on inputs the computer receives from various switching systems and the location sensors on other trains within the system. If these systems fail then the human operators are the ones tasked with stepping in and taking action. However what has happened in a lot of the recent cases, the humans have either not reacted in time or reacted in diametric opposition to what they should have done to save themselves. Case in point the plane crash in Buffalo, New York some months ago.

While it's true the flight crew may not have had the proper amount of training for the particular aircraft they were operating at the time yet when the plane began to build up ice and approach a stall, the controls underwent what is known as a 'shaker' whereby the pilot is to understand that the plane's nose should be dipped towards the ground to gain airspeed and thus keep the plane in the air and flying. Unfortunately, natural human reaction when in the air is that you don't want to go down unless you really want to. So what happened there is that the computer was attempting to angle the nose down to gain airspeed but the pilots were pulling up in order to gain altitude. The end result? The plane ended up stalling and crashing into the ground.

Similarly with Air France 447, early reports indicate that the airspeed indicators were not functioning properly so the plane's computer may have believed that the plane was going slower than it actually was so it may have increased the speed and eventually flew the plane at speeds at ranges above its structural limits which may have ended up with the plane breaking apart due to stresses on the fuselage. There again, human reliance on computers and trusting the computers to do the right things at the right time ended up with the potential for confusion and problems that had deadly results. Now I don't wish to imply that the operators of either flights or the Metro trains in question were incapable of doing their jobs; on the contrary, I'm sure they were great at it, but when we come to rely on computers or technology more than ourselves is when we can have problems.

Don't believe me? Well take the simple example of cell phones. It used to be that you either memorized the phone numbers of your friends or wrote them down. I remember writing down my school friends phone numbers or committing them to memory. What about now? Well all you have to do is call your friend's cell phone once and they will have your number and if they call you back you will have their's. Now supposing you're in an emergency and your cell phone battery has died. What will you do then? That's when I start to realize that while technology is a wonderful thing it can also be a crutch and a double-edged sword that can hinder us.

Now before people think that I'm some backwoods character who enjoys reading by firelight while cooking pheasant I went to catch while out hunting and gathering I'd ask you to note that I do maintain a blog and I have most (if not all) of the major accoutrements of modern society at my fingertips as well. I enjoy my technology too but it's incidents like these (among others) that remind me that I shouldn't rely on machines wholeheartedly. I need to rely on the one machine I've always owned. My brain.