Safety

Safety is often confused with security. A system or an environment may be secure, but if its normal operation does not achieve the intended goals, it may not be safe. Events will not progress as intended, and could go horribly wrong, even to the extent of grave injuries and loss of life. The more society relies upon digital technologies, the more we count on software to assure our safety. The issue of safety arises in a great variety of circumstances. Our discussion will start with dangers to the individual, then we will widen our focus to the organization, to society, and, finally, to the world. The digital divide that discourages internet use among older adults is due in part to threats posed to safe use of computers by ‘evil’ software such as programs that ‘phish’ for personal information, thereby gaining access to finances and committing identity theft, as we have discussed in the previous chapter. We shall enlarge upon this discussion by speaking of another risk—computer rage, which is caused by frustration when users cannot understand or manage the technology. Such instances are especially dangerous for senior citizens. We shall also discuss two ways in which the internet may not be safe for younger people: cyberbullying and revenge porn. We then examine a topic that arises in daily life: safety threats caused to pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers by the continual use of distracting mobile devices. Our inability to control the costs of large-scale data processing implementations is a threat to the safety and health of organizations and governments, as is our inability to understand, modify, and fix large software systems that are no longer maintained by their creators. We shall describe several software disasters, both during their development and after they have been deployed and used. These include the software crisis at the turn of the century—the Y2K threat—which actually was averted, and several cases in which up to billions of dollars or pounds were wasted, including the decades-long saga of air traffic control in the USA.