New York Times columnist Maureen Down discusses the "chilling episode on Flight 253" today, and the eerie resonance with Katrina and wondering what planet FEMA was on. My comment on the latest system failure, echoing ever again T.S. Eliot's perception that mankind is always "dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good."
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I think the most important lesson we refuse to accept is that there are no "technical" systems, only "socio-technical" ones. Day after day, decade after decade, we see cover stories headlined "Our Technology will Save Us!", followed by a story of the social failings that have made our problems worse with every short-sighted and ill-conceived attempt to fix them.
It doesn't matter whether it is "hardware" or "software" or vast administration-ware or corporation-ware -- the products of our hands and minds always reflect our spirit and hearts, and lately, the spirit is dismal and the hearts vary between contempt and indifference.
The result is always the same, as though we designed an amazing machine, and then built it from clay instead of metal. You can always point at some technical place where it broke, but that is not the real culprit, not the real cause we should blame for the failure.
Our corporations, economy, administrations, national security policy and practice, our Congress, our "nation building" abroad and our Katrina rebuilding at home are "ungovernable" and patent failures, but our solution is to seek "more math and science", more technology.
Surely it doesn't matter that we treat each other badly, does it?
Yes, it does. Fix it where it's broken, in our weak suit, the true core of our civilization, which has nothing to do with computers or databases or national strategic planning. Otherwise, we will just get more and more of the same.
