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🦺 SciFi Insight
Minority report and predictive technologies
Welcome to the 33rd edition of Safe For Work. Some recent safety news and then a story inspired by ´Minority Report.´ Seems like predictive technologies may be employed to deal with the challenges in the news section…
In Safety News
Radiation exposure in Samsung plant demonstrates the complexity of keeping workers safe. Faulty wiring may be the culprit.
Employees at all levels deal with mental health issues. The original report examining the empathy gap is available here.
Whether you agree with the report, the evidence of shorter attention spans and increased distraction is growing. Some amount of error seems inevitable given this reality, so your processes and tools need to account for it.
The System
For Amanda, it’s something about how she puts down her spoon after she finishes eating her cereal. The always-on webcam above her television in the living room, which just catches the edge of the kitchen, can see her left hand in that view, maybe. Is it really sensitive enough to notice the tremor as she’s putting down the spoon?-- it’s so small.
“The system is a mystery,” says Amanda’s suddenly-former boss on the phone, as she’s about to get in her car to come to her suddenly-former job at the plant. She turns around and heads back inside. “Nobody knows, really, how it knows what it knows-- but it knows.”
He doesn’t say anything about the tremor. He doesn’t even know about the tremor-- the system doesn’t tell him about that. It doesn’t tell him about the version of the future where Amanda comes into work today and she steps through the door with her left foot first instead of her right foot, sure, just like she always does, but a few hours later her hand suffers a bigger twitch while she’s operating the forklift. There’s a future where she knocks over half the warehouse-- and now she doesn’t.
For Thomas, it’s something about he steps first with his left foot instead of with his right foot after tapping his ID-badge on the console outside and beeping open the door.
The surveillance-cameras flag it immediately-- they bypass his suddenly-former boss and go straight to the security-staff. Thomas is dragged out of the building by his elbows and left on the sidewalk. They take his badge, and they clear out his locker and mail him the contents-- that’s only right-- and they put a standing note in place to immediately inform the police if he ever comes within five-hundred feet of the building again; nobody mentions anything having to do with that in the email they send him that afternoon about how the system is a mystery.
It’s a good thing, know the few people who know. For the past two years, Thomas has stepped through that door with his right foot first instead of his left-- every single day for the past two years. To step through now with his left foot first-- that kind of chaos just doesn’t belong in the workplace. That kind of instability just has to be dealt with. There’s a future where Thomas gets into an argument with Lindsay, today. There’s a future where he comes back tomorrow with the old rifle his father left him, which he keeps in the shed out back of the house he’s probably not going to be able to afford anymore. Nobody wants that future-- and nobody knows, really, how the system knows what it knows-- but it knows.
You just can’t trust a person who starts switching first-feet like that.
For Christopher, it’s something about how his mother called him two days earlier-- something about the tone of her voice when she hung up the phone. Run the calculations through the neural network-- do it as many times as you like, and you’ll always get the same result after a phone-call with that tone of voice. If Christopher comes into work today, the first thing he’ll do after stepping through the door with his right foot-- just like he always has-- is go marching right into his manager Donald’s office and ask for a raise. He’ll ask politely-- Christopher has always been polite, just like he’s always been right-footed-- and of course Donald will say no, just as politely-- Donald has always been perfectly good at politely saying no-- but what the system knows, in the mysterious way that it knows, is that two days after a phone call where your mother hangs up with that certain tone of voice, a person doesn’t take no for an answer when they’re asking for a raise.
There are two possible futures if Christopher is allowed to come into work today-- neither of them good. In one future, Donald holds his ground after the sort of conversation you really never want to have-- he’s a good soldier, Donald-- and he manages to stave off the raise, and not only that, he gets Christopher to walk out of his office, calmly accepting it, getting back to work, deciding for himself that it’s okay, it’s going to be okay, he’s going to find some other way to pay for the procedure-- crowdfunding, maybe, or he can give some blood.
But Donald isn’t feeling so good. Donald is feeling conflicted in this future. Donald is having misgivings, unease about how that conversation went before things finally settled into a better shape. The system knows Donald as well as it knows Christopher-- nobody knows how it knows, but it knows. Donald spends the rest of the day thinking about some of the things that Christopher said to him-- they echo over and over in his head. Donald spends the rest of the day thinking about some of the things that he said back to Christopher, and that’s what really gets to him. He thinks about how he never really wants to say things like that to anybody. He thinks about how he came to this point in his life, where he’s saying things like that to people.
He isn’t paying attention. There are consequences. A spark leads to a flame leads to a blaze leads to a building in cinders-- Donald needs to be paying attention. Donald is responsible for everyone’s safety, after all.
In the other future, Donald gives Christopher the raise.
That’s a slippery slope.
In another future, the system has Donald letting Amanda know that she might be developing a degenerative neurological disorder. In another future, he keeps her off the forklift for a while. She gets treated on company insurance-- it takes years. It takes tens of thousands.
In another future, the system has someone step in long before Thomas reaches his breaking point. In another future, Donald has sat down with Lindsay already five months before this and explained to her that insults like that really don’t belong in the workplace. You can’t talk like that about someone’s wife. You can’t talk like that about someone’s kids. In another future, Lindsay doesn’t take that well-- but policies exist, and the system knows what it knows, and it knows the way that other companies have gone after the CEO’s niece gets fired. It knows the consequences of instability.
Nobody knows how it knows what it knows, but it knows-- it’s a mystery.
For Michaela, it’s something about how she’s been talking to Henry-- and for Henry, it’s something about how he’s been talking to Charlotte-- and for Charlotte, it’s something about how she’s been talking to Olivia-- and for Olivia, it’s something about how she’s been talking to Richard. It’s something about what they’ve all been saying, in the break-room, or in passing during their shifts, or out in the parking-lot, on the way to their cars, or in the coffee-shop down the street, or on the phone with each-other or in their group-chat, more and more. Something about how things really need to change around here. Something about doing something about something. Something about working-conditions. Something about pay. Something about safety. Something about security.
Something about the system.
Something about standing together. Something about holding an election.
The system has to be fast. It’ll be illegal to fire them for it afterwards. There’s no time to waste; in another future, there are picket-lines. In another future, the company loses millions.
“The system is a mystery,” shrugs a man in a suit. “Nobody knows, really, how it knows what it knows-- but it knows.”
That ends our exploration of robotics and automation. See you next week as we draw inspiration from inventors and inventions.
Stay safe.
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