When Technology Fails, Who’s Responsible?
We’re creating new technologies without giving thought to the danger they could cause if they fail
Electricity is such an integral part of our everyday lives, we hardly even think of it as a technology. There’s a very good reason for that: Decades of careful regulation and planning across many industries and levels of government have worked together to make electricity pervasive, rarely prone to outage, and as safe as humanly possible. But somehow this approach is rarely followed in current technology development — even for products and services where failure can, like electricity, lead to extreme danger, and even death.
A few years ago, for instance, I got a sneak preview of an upcoming luxury sedan from a major automotive brand. Sitting in the driver’s seat, it all seemed elegant and sleek — until I noticed the in-car entertainment system below the dashboard. It was a large flat screen, seemingly designed to resemble an iPad. All the controls were touch-based, so there was no way for a driver to navigate the system without having to take their eyes off the road, even to perform a simple task like turning the volume down. Still worse, the display was bright blue, a key culprit for causing temporary vision impairment at night.
