An observation by Richard R. Johnston August 15, 2003

Blackout 2003

Americas apparent management philosophy:
    "It hasn't failed before so we don't have to prepare for it." or
    "Its not our preferred outcome, so we don't have to prepare for it".

Yesterdays gigantic blackout is another reminder of our not wanting to measure or even understand the consequences risks in the endevors we undertake. For more than two decades there has been a shift from 'we are responsible' and 'we won't tolerate anything less than our fill capability' to "it's too much trouble to engineer contingencies when the risk probably won't happen".

The Blackout of 2003, space shuttle Columbia tragedy, Corporate scandals, unprotected military supply lines in Iraq, insurgency in Iraq, unreliable ubiquitous computers vulnerable to the simplist email viruses; These events were highly possible outcomes warned about ahead of time, but these outcumes were not considered the highest probability and therefore not prepared for even with a contingency plan. What happened to the 'Can do', 'Failure destroys our reputation','The integrity of the profession'.

Could it be a shift from the confidence that 'we can prevent failures' to 'we can't cover all contingencies so let fate do its will'?