Failure- (part 1)

Failure is technology’s gift to us. Failure is a gift because it teaches us how to solve problems. Whether we are talking about mechanical or digital devices, troubleshooting the reasons for failure is an inescapable feature of the user experience.

Failure is simply shorthand for “learning the hard way.” Throughout most of our lives we don’t want to learn the hard way because it is, well . . . hard. It is hard because it is time consuming. It is hard because it tests our patience. It is hard because it exhausts us mentally and often physically. It is much easier to simply follow instructions or observe a master and repeat the steps. It is easier because we don’t have to learn from our own mistakes.

Learning from the mistakes of others is wonderful and it is one reason why humanity can make such tremendous strides generation after generation. We make progress because Chemists, Engineers, Architects, Designers, and Psychologists can reap the benefits of hundreds and thousands of years of trial and error simply by reading a book or listening to a professor. If we had to learn everything we know through trial and error, we would simply not be able to learn as much over the course of our lives. Shortcuts, like learning from the mistakes (and successes) of others, are a necessary part of learning. People like Socrates, Einstein, Buckminster Fuller and Richard Feynman could reach the heights they reached precisely because they “stood on the shoulders of giants.”

However, it is important to remember that these “giants” learned what they learned by persevering through failure after failure after failure. When something isn’t yet known, trial and error is the only real way to figure it out. Joe Sutter couldn’t have known a fraction of what he knew about the design of Boeing’s 747 if it wasn’t for the Wright brother’s seemingly endless string of failures.

Source: www.wright-brothers.org

Their early failures were a gift to Joe Sutter, Boeing, and anyone who has ever benefited from air travel. Those failures were gifts because they taught the Wright brothers that something they were doing was wrong. This knowledge helped them eliminate ideas and discover the truth the same way a sculptor eliminates the extra marble to uncover the statue. Every failure was the gift of real-world instruction.

So why do we hide failures if they are are so beneficial? Why do we quit when they start to accumulate? Why do we ignore the instructions they give to us?

We do these things because failure exposes a soft spot in us, it shows us a place where we are vulnerable, where we lack power over our surroundings or ourselves. When we fail we come to a point where we have to make a decision; we can either resign ourselves to the fact that we are ineffectual, or we can solve the problem.

“Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.” -Roger Von Oech

Failure is technology’s gift to us because it trains our minds. It trains us to become problems solvers. It trains us to look at the world in a more optimistic way because over time we learn that as long as we keep trying new approaches we will eventually find a solution.

When we troubleshoot a technological problem, we begin to see things not as objects, but as systems. Viewing a toaster as a mysterious machine that produces results doesn’t help us fix one when it breaks. Viewing a toaster as series of processes that are interconnected in a toast-making system can, however.

Source: freepatentsonline.com

Failure is technology’s gift to us because the first step to solving any problem is to learn how the system is supposed to work. The next step is trying to figure out what processes within the system are not doing their job. Before we have even fixed the problem, we have already gained new knowledge and our view of the world has begun to change. Because of the failure of technology, we are learning to see the world not as a place full of mysterious objects, but as a place full of systems that we can learn about.

The great irony, the great gift, is that failure sews the seeds of its own destruction by training us to solve problems.

(to be continued)