Forgetting The Human Factor

S.T. Masty writes:

Years ago, an elderly British civil engineer sat at the bar in Peshawar, Pakistan, near the foothills of the Khyber Pass, and I have no idea if what he told me was true.

At the end of the 19th Century, he said, when the Germans invented the diesel engine, the weakest part was the governor and when it broke the engine ran ever faster until it exploded, injuring or even killing the driver. The metallurgists lacked the technology to strengthen the governor, so the mechanical engineers were made to design structural flaws into the engine block in order to, after the governor malfunctioned, make it crack and release the surplus energy safely. This irritated the mechanical engineers grievously, upsetting their German traditions of perfectionism and their justifiable professional pride. They complained that, were there any justice in this world, the metallurgists would be made to overcome their failure ruthlessly in order to spare the mechanical engineers the indignity of building intentional flaws into their near-perfect portion of the device.

When people wonder how to restore communities and renew values, is it possible that hyper-efficient economics and technology lead inexorably to social explosion? Are we as the lab rats that kept pressing the apparatus, sending electric shocks into the pleasure centres of their brains until they neglected to even eat or sleep? Have we a broken governor and no flaw built into the social engine block, as our own mounting economic bounty entices us to destroy our societies and then ourselves?
 

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