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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!microsoft!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!sts
From: sts@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stanley T Shebs)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: re:  how can I fix my anti-grav aircar?
Message-ID: <404@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Aug-83 14:58:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.404
Posted: Thu Aug 11 14:58:09 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Aug-83 15:29:24 EDT
References: <4021@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: Boeing Aerospace, Seattle
Lines: 35

User interfaces are fine, but I think the original question was about
the overall reliability of a highly technological society.  Our society
is less inherently reliable than it was a century or two centuries
ago, and this has become more obvious in the past several years.
Consider: although one does not need to know the internal workings
of an FM radio to use it, how many people can fix it using only raw
materials?  If you have replacement capacitors and ICs, it requires
only a moderate amount of specialized knowledge, but suppose the radio
is old and the parts are no longer available.  This has already
happened to me once with my personal computer.  I had used a fairly
obscure memory chip on one board, and, well, one of them failed.
Guess what?  The part was no longer available.  Rather than try to
find a supplier, I ended up redesigning part of the board.  Now I
wonder about those people with 8008's in their products.  
The situation now is that it is often cheaper to replace black
boxes than to repair them, and now many of those black boxes are
*designed* to be replaced.  Most are not repairable.  A highly
technological society depends on a massive infrastructure, which
in turn depends on the high availability of resources.  This infrastructure
has become more and more necessary to supply replacement parts,
and it is rather fragile.  Any kind of extended disaster could
cause a massive breakdown (imagine us running completely out of oil
*now*.  Could everything be kept running long enough to develop
alternate energy sources?  Can't research solar cells if your lab
equipment breaks down and can't be repaired).

I'm reminded (sorry to carry on so long) of my grandmother's home
town in the middle of Utah.  It is basically self-contained, in
the sense that anything breaking down can be fixed by someone in
town.  Scrap metal is saved, and I have seen some real artists 
fashioning replacement parts from it.  Needless to say, they are
suspicious of things like computer controls in cars.

					stan the leprechaun hacker
					ssc-vax!sts (soon utah-cs)