Leonardo's Laptop

Dangerous Technology

Poorly implemented information technologies and badly designed software with confusing layouts can damage your health in more ways than one. Losing data or services as your hard drive or server fails, and watching as hours of work disappear into the ether, is something that every computer user has experienced at one time or another. To add to your frustration, baffling error messages pop up, giving you little choice but to switch off and start again. Although the wasted time is annoying, poorly designed technology rarely does little more than just cost you a few hours’ work. Occasionally, though, it can maim and even kill.

The Therac-25 was a radiation therapy device controlled by software with a poorly designed user interface and sloppy documentation. Rather than treating patients with controlled doses of radiation, it burned them. One patient’s burns were so extensive that her breast had to be surgically removed. Another patient jumped off the table during treatment because of the pain. Doctors could not believe the machine was at fault and continued to use it, partly because the error logs (computer files that collect error messages) either ...