Failing Gracefully

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr Kevin Fong concludes his exploration of the boundaries between the medical profession and other industries for valuable lessons that might be of use to us all.

In this final episode, Kevin talks to people who have spent their lives investigating what it takes to make high-performance, high-reliability systems work safely when lives are on the line.

Since the days of Project Apollo, People have come to rely more and more heavily upon the digital computer. Whether it’s aerospace, the automotive industry, medicine or even the financial sector, technology has become so central to the success of these complex systems, that it’s become increasingly more difficult for the human to remain in control when these systems fail. Technology, some argue, isn’t just replacing us, it’s displacing us.

Is this situation inevitable or is there a way to better protect ourselves from the risks that opaque, complex technological systems create?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:03.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use
0:07.0	go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts.
0:15.0	You're with the BBC. I'm Kevin Fong. I'm a medical doctor, but I also used to work with NASA.
0:20.0	And in this, the final programme in our series, The Truth about success and failure in medicine,
0:25.4	I'll be looking at the surprisingly important lessons that healthcare might learn
0:29.6	from human space exploration and how complex systems deal with the inevitability of failure.
0:37.0	Right now breaking news here stocks all around the world are tanking because of the crisis on Wall Street.
0:43.0	One and lift off, lift off of the 25th
0:48.0	space shuttle mission and it is
0:50.0	close to power.
0:51.0	Flight 447 would have been safely on autopilot as it headed out over the Atlantic.
0:56.0	The story tonight is the disaster in the American space program.
0:59.0	The shuttle Challenger exploded soon after Lifting.
1:02.0	What are all these failures? Why are they all coming at one time? Challenger exploded soon after lifting.
1:02.6	What are all these failures?
1:03.8	Why are they all coming at one time?
1:05.4	He was physically trying to break
1:06.8	and the vehicle was fairly slowing down.
1:08.4	Shock waves from the collapse of Lehman Brothers
1:10.3	continues to hit the stock market.
1:11.9	Seven astronauts lost their lives when the space shuttle Columbia broke up 40 miles above Texas.
	...

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