ArtTech

nextTechnology as bias, behavior as predictable. working against the default

Technology as bias, behavior as predictable.

This clip from Ron Howard's 1995 movie, Apollo 13 is another example of what I mean about keeping the conversation about technology fluid, and seeing it as choices that reveal and conceal different aspects of experience. Here we see that the value of this frame of mind is that it encourages us to see beyond the default position that the world seems to present.

As in any conversation with an old friend, you know your partner’s point of view. This is what I mean by the default position; it can also be called a bias. Tools have bias too, in that you can predict what might be concealed or revealed by any particular choice. But default positions can be shifted, to some degree, if we work against what we already know.

At this point in the movie the flight engineers at Mission Control have just discovered that a failure of the oxygen filtration system on the space capsule and the lunar landing module will most likely cause the astronauts to die of suffocation before they can return to Earth. The problem has appeared because the scrubbers on the capsule don't match those on the lander, and since the astronauts never actually landed on the Moon (because of an equipment malfunction shortly after take-off), they've nearly exhausted their supply of air.  

To save the astronauts, a new filtration method must be found. The plan is to link the oxygen system of the landing module to the one in the capsule — a technical impossibility due to the incompatible geometries of the two machines. As one engineer says, "This just isn't a contingency we've remotely looked at." Nevertheless, the astronauts will die unless someone can "make a square peg fit in a round hole."  

In a small conference room a large box is turned over onto a table, and miscellaneous spare parts tumble out. In order for the engineers to build a new filter system, they must not see what is right in front of them. Rather, they have to imagine each odd bit of technology differently in order to see what it might be hiding. That is, in spite of all their training, these technologists, in that moment, are called to go against the grain of their expertise.  

This scene is an example of behavioral fluency — the default position does not prohibit other choices. In this case, the solution lies in seeing the unfamiliar within the familiar. As conversations go, this one absolutely must generate something unprecedented from within the already known, or people are going to die. Another way to say it is that these engineers must unlearn what they know in order to respond to what the world has just told them.

Although the stakes aren't quite as high in my own work — no one's life is at risk — I think this is an excellent way to talk about technology. Fluency means fluidity; it means not getting stuck in what we already know; and it means remaining open to dimensions of experience that our choices might have hidden from view.

ESC closes this window.