Computers' Mistakeover

By Leslie Walker
Thursday, May 25, 2006

Just as technology amplifies our human strengths, it can also showcase our weaknesses.

Don't believe me? Go to Google News and type in "computer glitch." I do this whenever I need a high-tech horror story for a speech.

When I ran the search last week, up popped stories about recent computer "glitches" that caused Citibank to make 274,800 incorrect banking transactions in Japan; led an Indiana gas station to sell gas for two-hundredths of a penny per gallon; and shut down security checkpoints at the Atlanta airport for hours, costing Delta Airlines $1.3 million.

Over in London, a "computer glitch" was blamed for the British government incorrectly labeling 1,500 innocent citizens as criminals because their names were confusingly similar to those of convicts. The disclosure followed a similar slip-up in which the British government accidentally set free more than 1,000 foreign prisoners who should have been considered for deportation.

In computing, "glitch" has a technical meaning: a false data output triggered by a sudden surge of electrical power. But in conversation, people use it to mean: "The computer screwed up, and I have no idea why."

In glitch stories, it's often hard to tell whether computers or humans are really malfunctioning. Technology enthusiasts insist computers are pure math machines and don't make mistakes. Rather, their "glitches" are due to erroneous programming instructions from their owners, who, after all, are mere mortals.

But one thing these glitch stories make clear -- we mortals are becoming more dependent on computers at a time when our machines are becoming more complex. And our increasing dependency magnifies the impact of any computer failure, regardless of its origin.

Plenty of high-profile computer projects have flopped, such as the FBI's attempt to create a massive "virtual case file" and the Federal Aviation Administration's attempt to update its air-traffic-control system. But it's the little electronic mishaps that get me.

Everyone has his own computers-gone-haywire tale. One that made me shake my head took place on a recent business trip when I went to check out of my hotel. "Sorry," the hotel manager calmly told me. "I can't tell you how much you owe or give you a receipt. Our computers are down." So I left my name and address and requested a receipt by mail, though I didn't like authorizing charges I couldn't review. A week later, when no bill or receipt had arrived, I called the hotel. Sounding harried now, the manager said: "Sorry, our computers were down for four straight days. It's been a nightmare getting everything straight."

When I told a pal about my close encounter of the computing kind, she said: "Same thing happened to me in the grocery store last week. We stood in line for an hour waiting for the cash registers to come back up."

That got me curious; I expanded my "computer glitch" search beyond Google News, limited to stories published in the past 30 days. Digging deeper into the Nexis database of newspaper, magazine and wire stories turned up a mix of seriously annoying, darkly comical and horrific "glitches" blamed on computers.

I chuckled over a new software system that inadvertently sped up the internal clocks of computers tracking parking permits at the University of Arkansas in January. Folks who had paid for parking were unable to leave the garage because the computer controlling the exit gate thought they had already left.

I also read about a computerized dialing system used by the sheriff's office in Wake County, N.C. It was supposed to automatically dial residents who lived near a convenience store where a killing occurred and ask if they'd seen anything out of the ordinary. Instead, the computer called area homes and simply announced that the sheriff was calling, which scared the bejesus out of everyone.

There also were the 3,000 automated calls Ohio's state prison system made to crime victim families, notifying them that inmates who had assaulted or killed their loved ones had been released, which wasn't true. What actually happened was that during a routine computer upgrade, a file listing inmates' names was mistakenly sent to the company handling victim notifications.

Transportation seems particularly prone to computer glitches, judging by how many travel delays get blamed on them. In January, a computer crash at a CSX Transportation dispatch center was cited as the root cause of stalled freight and commuter trains in the District and six other states. And at London's Gatwick airport last winter, airline staffers resorted to using pens to write boarding passes after their computers crashed.

How quaint -- manually operated pens! I told a colleague that story, and he talked about how adamant he is that his young kids not only develop proficiency with pen and paper, but also learn how to use dead-tree dictionaries, so they won't be too dependent on computers and Google.

Pens and dictionaries won't spare us from our escalating dependency on computers, of course. But they can help preserve non-electronic ways of thinking and communicating, which we may need in the future more than we expect. They also can help us remember that we are in charge of computers, not the other way around. Ultimately, their failings are our own, and we have a say over how far we let them into our lives.

As eyebrow-raising as today's computer glitches are, I expect tomorrow's to be more jarring. I got the creeps reading about how Honda is introducing in Europe a new Accord that steers itself using a computerized system. Mounted up front is a radar device to sense cars ahead and maintain a respectable distance, while cameras read white lines on the pavement to keep the car from veering outside its lane.

After two decades of watching computers take over more and more of my life, I doubt I'll be buying a self-steering car anytime soon.

How about you?

Leslie Walker welcomes e-mail at leslie@lesliewalker.com.