Technology. If you would have told someone in the 1800's where we would be today, they would have put you in a looney bin. We have advanced so far in such a short time. Things that were once unfathomable have become reality. With our advances in techonology has come a debate, if you will, of our control on it. Do we have control or does techonology have the control over us? Now, I do not have the answers to this but I have recently been informed of the term "The Human Factor," a term coined by Kim Vicente. The Human Factor plays a leading role in technology, and sometimes people forget this. When developing new technology, one must take into consideration the Human Factor. Let me explain this more clearly, technology is developed, it can be completely flawless, perfect inside and out but the minute you have an average human running it, it can malfunction and even turn deadly. Many average humans do not have vast knowledge of technology, so when one thing goes wrong they do not know how to fix it. I think this is the point that Vicente is trying to make. That because the technology is smarter than most of us, it is taking the control.
The Human factor can be found in other places too. In “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut the human factor plays a big role. For instance Dr. Felix Hoenikker is the father of the atom bomb. This character was just interested in everything and anything. He was brilliant and would put his all into anything from turtles to the atom bomb. I see an aspect of the human factor in him. I do not think that when he was creating the atom bomb, that he thought of exactly what it would be used to do, instead I think he was solely interested in being ABLE to produce an atom bomb. He seems the kind of person who wants to find a way to create everything possible, no matter how ridiculous the idea may seem. The Human Factor here being that Dr. Felix Hoenikker had the vast knowledge of technology but not so much the knowledge of the consequences of the technology that he created. This also goes along with the ice-nine he created which would freeze the swamps and the mud for the Marines. He was presented with a problem and he was determined to find a solution. The solution was ice-nine but I don’t know if he followed it through and realized that it could be the end of the world. It would freeze one swamp and everything that fed into and out of it and so on until the whole world was frozen.
The Human Factor is present everywhere; from how to fix a car, knowledge of consequences, how to run a nuclear plant, and even how to use a cell phone. It can be an average human or it could be a genius; we all have our flaws which don’t mix well with technology. And because of this human factor we could very well lose the control, if we haven’t already.
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I totally agree with what you said. When you think of how far technology has brought us it's crazy. Even since we were alive we have seen so many changes that have shaped our lives. For example, we now have touch screen phones that allow us to call someone with one touch, and my grandparents had an old dial phone that took 2 minutes to only dial the number. I find it very interesting how this technology is out-smarting us. Like you said we must consider the Human Factor when we think of all this technology- what use to be simple task have become much more intense and complicated so the average person would not be able to fix it. A note about operating technology. When a device malfunctions, whose fault is it? Is it the device, or the person using it? This is a topic that I feel can be heavily debated. Many people try to blame the machine for these mistakes when it could have been them using it incorrectly. It is funny how we have become so attached to these complex technologies. As stated in "A Threat to Our Quality of Life: Technology Beyond Our Control" we have adopted many "electronic leashes". Once I read that I totally see it, we are constantly like "where is my phone, or ipod? What if we could not have those for a week, we all would be lost. It is sad how much of a necessity these devices are.
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