Black Box Bargains

How you respond to technology relative to your date of birth (modified from a Doug Adams quote):

1. Anything that was invented before you were born is ordinary stuff and just how the world works.

2. Anything invented between when you were 15 and 35 years old is exciting and revolutionary; you can probably find a career in it.

3. Anything invented after that is devilish and against the good order of things.

The light switch is an excellent example of the first category. You “flip” the switch and voila! Let there be light! (And there was light.) Interestingly, even though I grew up in a house with light switches, I still use the phrase “turn on” and “turn off” the light. Perhaps back in the day, before the toggle switch was invented, you literally turned a knob – probably true for gas lighting pre-Edison. (I haven’t done the research to check.) In any case, most of us treat the light switch a black box, and we don’t think about what’s inside the technology. It just works.

Until it doesn’t. And that’s when you might start being a scientist and asking questions. Why isn’t the light coming on? Is it the bulb? Is it the switch?

Carl Roach, in the prologue to his book Simply Electrifying, paints a scenario. “Imagine your world without electricity: No morning alarm clock or coffee maker. No electric lights, heat, or air conditioning. No whirling electric motors. And no computers or cell phones.” Roach traces the ‘discovery’ and use of electricity; his book is subtitled The Technology that Transformed the World, from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk. The story begins with Franklin and his famous kite experiment, but the key (pun intended) according to Roach was a bold mind “eager and able to imagine electricity – to see the unseen.”

Seeing the unseen. It’s a way one peers into the black box of what was previously mysterious and unknown. As a chemistry teacher, that’s my everyday work: To make visible the invisible. How do those tiny things we call atoms and molecules lead to the properties of everything we can see and touch? How can we transform one thing into another? Chemical reactions are like magic in a way. Writing this, I’m reminded that my familiarity with chemistry should not blind me into blandness. The commonplace isn’t simply ordinary. And I hope my students see that delving deeper into the invisible world can be exciting, even revolutionary!

But there’s more. By examining the broad scope of history, the economist Roach, examines the roles played by fundamental science, public policy and private enterprise, transforming the power-electricity business into the complicated behemoth it is today. Why is this important? Roach writes: “History can help decision makers in business and government by leading them to take a broader view… to look across time; surely what happened yesterday influences what happens today… to look across all the factors that drive change, including those document in this book: science and technology; politics and geopolitics; regulatory policy; law and the courts; business strategy; economics… [However] if the narrative of electricity was wrongly said to begin with Edison, it would have missed the heart and soul of the original story – the science of Franklin, Faraday and Maxwell. Failing to consider that science would lead to a faulty understanding of the past as well as an inability to see the great hope of the future.”

Roach begins his book with the science, then moves on to the Edison-Westinghouse/Tesla battle. The Hoover Dam, Tennessee Valley Authority, Three Mile Island, the California Electricity Crisis and Enron, are among the topics discussed both in detail but also with a broad-angle lens. Elon Musk shows up at the end, underscoring the importance of fundamental science in technological innovation. Without exploring the black box, there can be small incremental improvements, but not a groundbreaking revolution.

When the automobile was first invented, you needed a bit of the mechanic’s knowledge if you were going to drive. If the car broke down, you likely had to fix it. When I first started driving, I learned how to diagnose simple mechanical problems – hopefully enough to get me to a mechanic’s shop if I ran into trouble. Cars ran smoother, the end-user knew less, and a specialization – the mechanic’s business – grew. The last time I brought my car into the shop, even the mechanic had to hook it up to the computer to diagnose the problem. One black box looking into another.

Thirty years ago, when there was a problem with the computer, I would open it up. Depending on the problem I might check the disk drive head. Or open up the metal box and swap card slots. I’ve even opened up an old CRT when there were monitor issues. Today, my MacBook is a black box. I’m not sure I could open it even I wanted to, at least without invalidating my warranty if I needed something fixed. Is this the black box bargain we’ve made? Give me smooth end-user technology. I don’t care what’s inside so long as it “works”. So what if there’s an algorithm that ‘streamlines’ what I see with every click on the Internet? What is an algorithm anyway? What does it mean that the net is neutral? Or not? The black box of technology is not just about physical products but encompasses systems and social structures – some so complicated that they lead to worldwide market crises – stocks, electricity, medicine.

I don’t wish for the good ole days. I’m happy to have the lights come on with the flick of a switch. But I should be a lot more circumspect about my black box bargains, particularly in the age of interconnected big data. I don’t think it’s the devil, but the devil might be in the details. Those of us in the education business are being inundated with promises of the next enterprise system Maxwell Demon that will shed light on the tiny nuances we might otherwise miss. We should rightly be suspicious, thermodynamics notwithstanding.