Beware the law of unintended consequences (From Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 

Illustrations by Brady Johnson

20. Machines are the easy part; people are the hard part. 

The very best technologist is a good psychologist. The skills needed to create a system, write software, or operate a piece of technology are all teachable: skills that may be complex and praiseworthy to be sure, but completely teachable. Skills that are akin to training a circus dog to ride a bicycle.

But technology plans fail in schools even when the school has people who can put the “stuff” in place. And then all this lovely stuff sits around gathering dust or is used by a pathetically small group of technology enthusiasts.

The book Crossing the Chasm (HarperBusiness, 2002) by Geoffrey A. Moore does as fine a job as I’ve seen explaining how to have new innovations adopted by nearly everyone in an organization.

Read it.

21. Beware the law of unintended consequences. 

The full impact of any technology adoption can never be fully predicted. (Just read any Michael Crichton novel.)

• Give kids access to the Internet, and they download term papers.
• Ask that all work be word-processed, and paper and toner bills sky-rocket.
• Give students a good means of sharing information electronically, and electronic cheating become endemic.
• Give parents real-time access to their children’s progress, and teachers become overwhelmed with e-mail.

Now, smart person that you are, you are probably thinking, “And you didn’t plan for this?” Nope, these things took me by surprise. 

View technology as the evil genie from 1001 Arabian Nights. You can get what you ask for – but it always comes with strings attached.

22. “Explain it to me like I was 6 years old.”

A common Murphy’s Law states: “Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.”

As an English major and former librarian who is sometimes less than technically astute and always has to sing in a soft voice “Righty tighty, lefty loosey” when encountering anything with threads, I always worry Murphy had me in mind when he wrote the law.

To counteract this, I try to remember Denzel Washington’s great line in the movie Philadelphia above. My frustrated technicians have sometimes worked with me for a very long time, drawing pictures, forming analogies, and searching for ever shorter words to describe functions and reasons for technologies.

Don’t make decisions about things you don’t understand. Develop an understanding no matter how long it takes.