Speaker 1: Welcome to Text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and today I thought
Speaker 1: it was a good time to take another opportunity to
Speaker 1: chat about one of the subjects. I really hammer her
Speaker 1: home in this series, and I don't make any apologies
Speaker 1: for this. It is not about convergence though long time
Speaker 1: listeners of tech Stuff know that for years that was
Speaker 1: my favorite trend to cover. It's about critical thinking. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is another critical thinking in Technology episode. Now. In
Speaker 1: these episodes, I explain how taking time and really thinking
Speaker 1: through things is important so that we make the most
Speaker 1: informed decisions we can and so that we aren't either
Speaker 1: fooling ourselves or you know, allowing someone else to fool
Speaker 1: us when it comes to technology. Though, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: a secret, using these skills in all parts of your
Speaker 1: life is a great idea because it can be really
Speaker 1: easy for us to fall into patterns where we let
Speaker 1: ourselves believe things just because it's convenient or you know,
Speaker 1: it reaffirms our biases are prejudices, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So if you use critical thinking beyond the realm of technology.
Speaker 1: I ain't gonna be mad. Specifically, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about a general category of issues in tech that some
Speaker 1: refer to as the black box problem. Now, this is
Speaker 1: not the same thing as the black box that's on
Speaker 1: board your typical airplane. In fact, i'll explain what that
Speaker 1: is first because it's pretty simple, and then we can
Speaker 1: move on. First, the black box inside airplanes is typically orange.
Speaker 1: So right off the bat, we have a problem with nomenclature, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you had one job black box. Actually that's
Speaker 1: that's not true. The black box has a very important
Speaker 1: job and it requires a couple of things to work.
Speaker 1: But the black box, which is orange, is all about
Speaker 1: maintaining a record of an aircraft's activities in a housing
Speaker 1: capable of withstanding tremendous punishment. Another name, or a a
Speaker 1: more appropriate name really for this device, for the black box,
Speaker 1: is the flight data recorder. Sensors in various parts of
Speaker 1: the plane detect changes and then send data to the
Speaker 1: flight data recorder, which you know, records them. If a
Speaker 1: pilot makes any adjustments to any controls, whether it's the
Speaker 1: flight stick or a knob or a button or a
Speaker 1: switch or whatever. The control not only does whatever it
Speaker 1: was intended to do, assuming everything's in working order, but
Speaker 1: it also sends us signal that is recorded on the
Speaker 1: flight recorder. So the job of the flight recorder is
Speaker 1: to create as accurate a representation of what went on
Speaker 1: with that aircraft as is possible. The Federal Aviation Administration
Speaker 1: or f a A in the United States has a
Speaker 1: long list of parameters that the flight recorder is supposed
Speaker 1: to keep track of, more than eighty in fact, and
Speaker 1: these include not just the aircraft systems, but what was
Speaker 1: going on in the environment. So if a pilot encounters
Speaker 1: a problem on a flight, or in a worst case scenario,
Speaker 1: in the event of a crash, the flight recorder represents
Speaker 1: an opportunity to find out what actually went wrong. You know,
Speaker 1: was it a malfunction, was it pilot error, was it
Speaker 1: whether the crash survivable? Memory units inside the heavy duty
Speaker 1: casing of the black box are really meant to act
Speaker 1: as a lasting record, So if the recorder is recoverable,
Speaker 1: it gives investigators a chance to find out what happened. But,
Speaker 1: as I said, that's not the black box I really
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about for today's episode, so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go into any more detail about that. Now,
Speaker 1: you could argue that the black box I want to
Speaker 1: talk about is sort of the opposite of what we
Speaker 1: find in airplanes, because in an airplane, the black box
Speaker 1: contains a record of everything that has gone on, and
Speaker 1: it can help explain why a certain outcome has happened.
Speaker 1: In technology in general, we use the term black box
Speaker 1: to refer to a system or technology where we know
Speaker 1: what goes into it and we can see what comes
Speaker 1: out of it, but we have no idea of what
Speaker 1: went on in the middle of that process. We don't
Speaker 1: have a way to understand the process by which the
Speaker 1: device takes input and produces output. Now, in most cases,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about an instance where literally nobody understands
Speaker 1: what's going on with a device or a system. It's
Speaker 1: more like the creators of whatever system we're talking about
Speaker 1: have purposefully made it difficult or impossible for the average
Speaker 1: person to understand or in some cases, even see what
Speaker 1: a technology is doing. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's not.
Speaker 1: So Maybe purposefully is being a little strong there, but
Speaker 1: that's often how it unfolds. Let's take a general example
Speaker 1: that has created issues with a particular subsection of tech heads,
Speaker 1: and those would be the gear heads, you know, the
Speaker 1: people who love to work on vehicles like motorcycles and
Speaker 1: cars and trucks and stuff, and what you might think
Speaker 1: of as the good old days, at least from the
Speaker 1: perspective of d I Y technology. There's plenty of other
Speaker 1: things that were wrong back then, but in those terms,
Speaker 1: the cars systems were pretty darn accessible. The motorist would
Speaker 1: need to spend time and effort to learn how the
Speaker 1: car worked and what each component was meant to do,
Speaker 1: but that was actually in a evable goal. So with
Speaker 1: a bit of study and some hands on work, you
Speaker 1: could suss out how an engine works. You know, how
Speaker 1: spark plugs cause a little explosion by igniting a mixture
Speaker 1: of fuel and air inside an engine's cylinders, How that
Speaker 1: explosion would force out a piston which connects to a
Speaker 1: crank shaft, and how that reciprocating motion of the piston
Speaker 1: would translate into rotational motion of the crank shaft that
Speaker 1: could then be transmitted ultimately to wheels. Through transmission, you
Speaker 1: could learn what the carburetor does, how the various fans
Speaker 1: and belts work, and what they do you know where
Speaker 1: the oil pan is and how to change out oil
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. What's more, you can
Speaker 1: make repairs yourself. If you had the tools, the replacement parts,
Speaker 1: and the knowledge and the time you could swap out parts.
Speaker 1: You could customize your vehicle. You know, I've known a
Speaker 1: lot of people who have taken on cars as projects.
Speaker 1: They'll purchase an old junker and then they will lovingly
Speaker 1: restore it to its former glory or turn it into
Speaker 1: something truly transformational. And all of that is possible because
Speaker 1: those old cars had really accessible systems. They were relatively
Speaker 1: simple electro mechanical systems. Once you understood how they worked,
Speaker 1: you could see how they worked or how they were
Speaker 1: supposed to work, and you could understand what was going on.
Speaker 1: Through that understanding, you could address stuff when things weren't
Speaker 1: going well. And that's how cars were for decades. But
Speaker 1: that began to change in the late nineteen sixties. But
Speaker 1: it really accelerated. Uh No, pun intended in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So what happened well in nineteen sixty eight, leading into
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, Volkswagen introduced a new standard feature for
Speaker 1: their Type three vehicle, which was sometimes called the Volkswagen
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: names for it. These were family cars, and volkswagen Is
Speaker 1: intent was to create a vehicle with a bit more
Speaker 1: luggage and passenger space than their type one, which was
Speaker 1: also known as the Volkswagen Beetle. The feature for these
Speaker 1: cars that I wanted to talk about was an electronic
Speaker 1: fuel injection system that was controlled by a computer chip,
Speaker 1: and the marketing for the this particular feature said that
Speaker 1: this quote electronic brain end quote was quote smarter than
Speaker 1: a carburetor end quote. Now, the purpose of a carburetor
Speaker 1: is to mix fuel with air at a ratio that
Speaker 1: is suitable for combustion inside the engine cylinders. But an
Speaker 1: engine doesn't need exactly the same ratio of fuel to
Speaker 1: air from moment to moment. It actually varies. As a
Speaker 1: vehicle runs longer, or it travels faster, or it starts
Speaker 1: climbing a steep hill, or you know, lots of stuff,
Speaker 1: the ratio changes somewhat, and the carburetor manages this with
Speaker 1: a couple of valves, one called the choke, another called
Speaker 1: the throttle, among other elements. But it's all mechanical and
Speaker 1: while it works, it's not as precise as an electronic
Speaker 1: system could be. And that's where the Volkswagen system came in.
Speaker 1: Volkswagen was pushing this as a more efficient and useful
Speaker 1: component than a carburetor. It would prevent the engine from
Speaker 1: being flooded with fuel and not enough air for combustion.
Speaker 1: It would handle the transitions of fuel and air mix
Speaker 1: ratios more quickly and precisely. It was the start of
Speaker 1: something big, but were it not for some other external factors,
Speaker 1: it might not have taken off the way it did,
Speaker 1: or at least not as quickly as it did. Those
Speaker 1: other factors, as I said, were external, and there were
Speaker 1: a pair of doozies. One was a growing concern that
Speaker 1: burning fossil fuels was having a negative impact on the environment,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be absolutely the case. Cities like
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, California, where getting around pretty much re buyers
Speaker 1: having a car, we're dealing with some really serious smog problems,
Speaker 1: and so organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency in the
Speaker 1: United States began to draft requirements to reduce car emissions.
Speaker 1: That would mean that automotive companies would have to create
Speaker 1: more efficient engine systems. The other major factor that contributed
Speaker 1: to this was the oil crisis of the nineties seventies,
Speaker 1: which I talked about not long ago in a different
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff podcast. This was a geopolitical problem that threw
Speaker 1: much of the world into a scramble to curb fossil
Speaker 1: fuel consumption because the supply was limited. The double whammy
Speaker 1: of environmental concerns and the oil crisis forced a lot
Speaker 1: of car companies to rethink their previous strategy, which was
Speaker 1: pretty much more power, make bigger, much fast, go go, go,
Speaker 1: go guzzle. That kind of is how they were thinking
Speaker 1: back in the day. Turns out that was an unsustainable option.
Speaker 1: And if you look back, especially at American cars during
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties, you see that trend of the
Speaker 1: engines getting bigger and more powerful, and that was just
Speaker 1: the way things were going until we started to see
Speaker 1: these external changes come in, and so more car companies
Speaker 1: began to incorporate computer controlled fuel injection systems. But this
Speaker 1: move also marked a move away from the design that
Speaker 1: made it, you know, harder for the d I Y
Speaker 1: crowd to work on cars. Working on a damaged carburetor
Speaker 1: was one thing. Dealing with a malfunctioning computer chip was another.
Speaker 1: It didn't fall into the typical skill set of your
Speaker 1: amateur mechanic. And of course we didn't stop at computer
Speaker 1: controlled fuel injection systems. Over time, we saw a lot
Speaker 1: more automotive systems make the transition to computer control. Today,
Speaker 1: your average car has computer systems that control the engine
Speaker 1: and the transmission, the doors, entertainment system, the windows, and
Speaker 1: these systems are all individual and they have a name.
Speaker 1: They're called electronic control units or e c USE. Collectively,
Speaker 1: they form the controller area network or can c a N.
Speaker 1: The connections themselves, the physical connections are called the can
Speaker 1: bus b US, and that's really just a way of
Speaker 1: saying these are the physical connectors that allow data to
Speaker 1: pass from one e c U to another. And there
Speaker 1: wasn't really like a central processing unit or anything. There
Speaker 1: was no like central brain. It was more like ec
Speaker 1: use that depend upon one another would send relevant information
Speaker 1: to each other and not to anything else. So you know,
Speaker 1: if the door sensor is showing a door is open,
Speaker 1: it can send an alert to other systems so that
Speaker 1: that information is is appropriately dealt with. Now, at the
Speaker 1: same time that these individual systems were evolving, so too
Speaker 1: we saw the rise of what would become the onboard
Speaker 1: diagnostic system or o b D, and the o b
Speaker 1: D keeps an eye on what's going on with the
Speaker 1: various systems in the car, and it sends notifications to
Speaker 1: the driver via dashboard indicators when something is outside normal
Speaker 1: operating parameters. So let's say that this diagnosis computer picks
Speaker 1: up that there's something hinky happening with the fuel air
Speaker 1: mixture and it activates that pesky check engine light on
Speaker 1: the dashboard that gives you next to no useful information.
Speaker 1: The problem is that these days it can be challenging
Speaker 1: or sometimes impossible to figure out exactly what caused that
Speaker 1: check engine light to come on without the access to
Speaker 1: some special equipment and expertise. The car systems have become
Speaker 1: so sophisticated that it could be a challenge to figure
Speaker 1: out what exactly has gone awry. Mechanics use devices called
Speaker 1: O b D scan tools, and these tools connect to
Speaker 1: the computer on board a car, and then the car
Speaker 1: provides a an error code to the scanner. This, by
Speaker 1: the way, took a long time to standardize because you've
Speaker 1: got a lot of different car companies out there, and
Speaker 1: obviously there was a need to move towards standardization so
Speaker 1: that you didn't have to have fifty different scan tools
Speaker 1: and fifty different code charts to deal with all the
Speaker 1: different car companies. But the code corresponds to the specific
Speaker 1: issue the O B D has detected. So not only
Speaker 1: do you need a special piece of equipment to diagnose
Speaker 1: what has gone wrong with the car, you also need
Speaker 1: to know the codes, or else you haven't really learned anything.
Speaker 1: If I get you know, a eight digit code, and
Speaker 1: I don't know what that code refers to, then I'm
Speaker 1: not really any better off than just looking at a
Speaker 1: check engine light. On top of all of that, even
Speaker 1: if you know what is wrong, you might not be
Speaker 1: able to easily access the problem or fix it due
Speaker 1: to the level of complexity, sophistication, and computerization of vehicles.
Speaker 1: Not all cars, or motorcycles or or whatever are equal. Obviously,
Speaker 1: some are a bit easier to work on than others.
Speaker 1: Some require a lot of specific care though. For example,
Speaker 1: if you're driving a Tesla, chances are the amount of
Speaker 1: personal tinkering you're going to do on your car is
Speaker 1: going to be fairly limited. Now I'm not saying it's impossible,
Speaker 1: just that it's really challenging. So in general, we've seen
Speaker 1: cars go from a mechanical system or electro mechanical system
Speaker 1: that the average person can understand and work on, to
Speaker 1: a group of interconnected, specialized computer systems that are increasingly
Speaker 1: difficult to access. The cars have become a type of
Speaker 1: black box. This can be extra frustrating for gear heads
Speaker 1: who have actually an understanding of underlying mechanical issues that
Speaker 1: could cause problems. They might even know how to solve
Speaker 1: an issue if they can just get to it, but
Speaker 1: they are finding themselves with fewer options in order to
Speaker 1: address underlying issues. Now, cars are just one example of
Speaker 1: technologies that have moved toward a black box like system.
Speaker 1: There are lots of others. But apart from making it
Speaker 1: harder to tinker with your tech, what's the problem. But
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'll talk about some of the
Speaker 1: pitfalls of turning tech into a black box. But first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. We're back. So the car
Speaker 1: transformed from a purely electro mechanical technology to one that
Speaker 1: increasingly relies on computer systems. But the computer itself can
Speaker 1: also be something of a black box for people none
Speaker 1: the very early days of the personal computer. It was
Speaker 1: hobbyists who were ordering kits through the mail and then
Speaker 1: building computers at home. Typically, these hobbyists had a working
Speaker 1: understanding of how the computer systems operated, you know, the
Speaker 1: actual way in which they would accept inputs and process
Speaker 1: information and then produce outputs. Before high level programming languages,
Speaker 1: programmers also had to kind of think like a computer
Speaker 1: in order to program them to carry out functions. As
Speaker 1: computer languages became more high level, meaning there was a
Speaker 1: layer of abstraction between the programmer and the actual processes
Speaker 1: that were going on at the hardware level of the computer,
Speaker 1: that connection began to get more tenuous. Now, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that programmers today don't have a real understanding of
Speaker 1: how computers work, but rather that this understanding is less
Speaker 1: critical because programming languages, computer engines, app developer kits you know,
Speaker 1: software developer kits and so on, provide a framework that
Speaker 1: reduces the amount of low level work programmers need to
Speaker 1: do in order to build stuff as software. For the
Speaker 1: average user, you know, someone who isn't learned in the
Speaker 1: ways of computer science, computers are pretty much black boxes.
Speaker 1: They work until they don't. You push buttons on a keyboard,
Speaker 1: or you click on a mouse, or you touch a screen,
Speaker 1: and you know, the computer does the stuff how it
Speaker 1: does stuff like how it detects a screen touch and
Speaker 1: then translates that into a command that is then executed
Speaker 1: to produce a specific result. You know, that's not important
Speaker 1: to us. We don't care or need to know how
Speaker 1: that works in order to enjoy the benefits of it.
Speaker 1: So for us, it's just the way things are. You
Speaker 1: push that button and this thing happens. It just does.
Speaker 1: The black box of the computer system, which can be
Speaker 1: a desktop, a laptop, tab, smartphone, video game console, you
Speaker 1: know whatever. It just takes care of what we needed
Speaker 1: to do. That's not to say a computer is impenetrably
Speaker 1: a black box. You can learn how they work, and
Speaker 1: how programming languages work and so on. Computer science and
Speaker 1: programming classes are all built around that. So while a
Speaker 1: computer system is effectively a black box to the average user,
Speaker 1: it wasn't made that way by design, and it can
Speaker 1: be addressed on a case by case basis, depending on
Speaker 1: the time, the interest of the individual computer user, and
Speaker 1: their dedication to learning. But sometimes people will set out
Speaker 1: to make technologies with the intent of them being black
Speaker 1: boxes from the get go. These technologies are dependent in
Speaker 1: part or in whole on of view skating how they work,
Speaker 1: in other words, by obscuring it. Sometimes that's in an
Speaker 1: effort to protect an invention from copycats, the whole idea
Speaker 1: being that if you come up with something really clever,
Speaker 1: you don't want someone else to come along, lift that
Speaker 1: idea and do the same thing you are doing, but
Speaker 1: selling it for you know, less money or something. But
Speaker 1: other times you might be hiding how something works, specifically
Speaker 1: with the intent to deceive. And now it's time to
Speaker 1: look much further back than the nineteen sixties. It was
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy in Europe. As the story goes, the European
Speaker 1: world had seen a great deal of advancement in mechanical
Speaker 1: clockwork devices. At that point. Clocks themselves, often powered by
Speaker 1: winding a spring and keeping time using gears with a
Speaker 1: reliable and consistent basis that was much better than earlier methods.
Speaker 1: Even allowed people the ability to carry a time keeping
Speaker 1: device with them. Phenomenal Based on similar principles, various tinkerers
Speaker 1: had come up with toys and distractions that also ran
Speaker 1: on clockwork, like gears and springs. Some of these were
Speaker 1: quite elaborate, such as figures that appeared to play musical instruments,
Speaker 1: and one of them was particularly impressive. It appeared to
Speaker 1: be an automaton that could play expert level chess. The figure,
Speaker 1: made out of wood, was dressed in Turkish costume, leading
Speaker 1: to it being called the Turk, or sometimes the mechanical Turk.
Speaker 1: If you were to sit down to play against the Turk,
Speaker 1: you as an opponent, would move a piece and then
Speaker 1: you would watch as this mechanical figure would shift and
Speaker 1: move a piece of its own in response. And the
Speaker 1: Turk was a pretty good chess player. It frequently beat
Speaker 1: the opponents at face. Sometimes it would lose to particularly
Speaker 1: strong players, but it held its own pretty darn well.
Speaker 1: The man behind this invention was Wolfgang Fawn Kimplin, who
Speaker 1: was in the service of Maria Teresa, Empress of the
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Empire. He had been invited to view a
Speaker 1: magician's performance in the court, so the story goes, and
Speaker 1: the Empress had invited him specifically and afterwards asked him
Speaker 1: what he thought, and allegedly he boasted he could create
Speaker 1: a much more compelling illusion than anything this magician did. Now,
Speaker 1: according to the story. The Empress essentially said, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll prove it buster, and he was given six months
Speaker 1: to do just that. The turk was what he had
Speaker 1: to show for it in six months time, and it
Speaker 1: reportedly went over like gang Busters. The wooden turk stood
Speaker 1: behind a cabinet, on top of which was the chessboard,
Speaker 1: and Kimplin would reportedly open the cabinet doors and reveal
Speaker 1: some gears and mechanics to prove that it was purely
Speaker 1: a mechanical system. In fact, the gears were masking a
Speaker 1: hidden compartment behind them, in which a human chess player
Speaker 1: was sitting inside, hunched over, keeping track of a game,
Speaker 1: using a smaller chessboard in front of them, and using
Speaker 1: various levers to move the turk's limbs in response. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of folks suspected that something was up from
Speaker 1: the get go, but you know, part of the fun
Speaker 1: of a magic trick is just not knowing what's going on.
Speaker 1: Some folks try very hard to figure out the process.
Speaker 1: I am not one of them. Others are just happy
Speaker 1: to be entertained by a very well performed trick. But
Speaker 1: in a way, the turk was a kind of black box.
Speaker 1: In fact, you could argue that a lot of magic
Speaker 1: tricks pretty much fall into the black box category. The
Speaker 1: process is purposefully hidden from the viewer. If we could
Speaker 1: see what the magician was doing from beginning to end,
Speaker 1: all the way through and without any misdirection, then it
Speaker 1: would and be magic. We might admire the skill of
Speaker 1: the magician how quickly they were able to do things,
Speaker 1: but we wouldn't really consider it magical. So the output
Speaker 1: is dependent upon people not knowing the process the inputs
Speaker 1: went through. Now that's not to say that you can
Speaker 1: appreciate a really good magic trick even if you know
Speaker 1: how it's done. One of the best examples I know
Speaker 1: of is Penn and Teller. They did a phenomenal version
Speaker 1: of the cups and balls routine where they used clear
Speaker 1: plastic cups and balls of aluminum foil to demonstrate how
Speaker 1: cups and balls works, and you can watch the entire
Speaker 1: time and even being able to see through the cups
Speaker 1: and see the moves they're being made, Teller does them
Speaker 1: with such skill that it is truly phenomenal. It doesn't
Speaker 1: hurt that Penn is spouting off a lot of nonsense
Speaker 1: at the same time and misdirecting even as you're watching
Speaker 1: what's going on, I highly recommend you check it out
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Look for pen and teller cups and balls.
Speaker 1: You won't be disappointed. Now. The Turk, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, was always intended to be an entertainment,
Speaker 1: not necessarily something that was specifically meant to perpetuate some
Speaker 1: sort of hoax. You wouldn't call a stage magician a
Speaker 1: huckster or a con man or anything like that. Their
Speaker 1: occupation is dependent upon misdirection and making impossible acts seem
Speaker 1: like they really happened, but always or nearly always with
Speaker 1: the implication that it's all an illusion or a trick
Speaker 1: of some sort. But not everyone is quite so forthcoming
Speaker 1: about the fact that the thing they're doing is done
Speaker 1: through trickery. For the scam artist, the black box creates
Speaker 1: an incredible opportunity. As technological complexity outpaces the average person's understanding,
Speaker 1: the scam artists can create fake adjets and devices that
Speaker 1: they claim can do certain things and then count upon
Speaker 1: the ignorance of the average person to get away with it. Typically,
Speaker 1: the go to scam is to convince people with money
Speaker 1: to pour investments into the hoax technology in an effort
Speaker 1: to fund whatever the next phase of development is supposed
Speaker 1: to be, whether that's to bring a prototype into a
Speaker 1: production model or to refine a design or whatever. But
Speaker 1: the end result is pretty much the same across the board.
Speaker 1: The corn artist tries to wheedle out as much money
Speaker 1: from their marks as they can before they pull up
Speaker 1: stakes and skip town, or they find some way to
Speaker 1: shift focus or punt any promises on delivering results further
Speaker 1: into the future, like that's the future me problem kind
Speaker 1: of approach. Once in a blue moon, you might find
Speaker 1: someone who was just hoping to make enough time to
Speaker 1: come up with a way to do their hopes for
Speaker 1: real zes, or at least to simulate it close enough
Speaker 1: so that people are satisfied. That typically doesn't work out
Speaker 1: so well. M. Thoromness. I'll get back to that. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about some examples of outright scams that leaned
Speaker 1: heavily on the black box concept, whether by having their
Speaker 1: supposed and actual operating mechanisms hidden or by obscuring how
Speaker 1: they really worked with a lot of nonsensical claims and
Speaker 1: techno babble. One historical scam artist was a guy named
Speaker 1: Charles Redheffer, who claimed to have built a perpetual motion machine.
Speaker 1: If he had managed to do such a thing, it
Speaker 1: would have been a true feat, as it would break
Speaker 1: the laws of physics as we understand them. So let's
Speaker 1: go over why that is just pretty quickly. For perpetual
Speaker 1: motion to work, and thus for free energy in general
Speaker 1: to work, a machine would need to be able to
Speaker 1: operate with absolutely no energy loss, and for free energy,
Speaker 1: it would have to generate that energy in some way.
Speaker 1: A perpetual motion machine, once set into motion, would never
Speaker 1: stop moving, you know, unless someone or something specifically intervened.
Speaker 1: But if it were left to its own devices, it
Speaker 1: would continue to do whatever it was doing until the
Speaker 1: last syllable of recorded time. To borrow a phrase from
Speaker 1: the Bard. Now, if we look at our understanding of thermodynamics,
Speaker 1: we'll see that doing this in the real world is impossible,
Speaker 1: or at least it would go against fundamental ways that
Speaker 1: we understand regarding how our universe works. The first law
Speaker 1: of thermodynamics says that energy is neither created nor destroyed.
Speaker 1: Energy can, however, be converted from one form into another.
Speaker 1: So if you hold a water balloon over the head
Speaker 1: of a close personal friend, let's say it's Ben bowlen
Speaker 1: of stuff. They don't want you to know. The water
Speaker 1: balloon has a certain amount of potential energy. If you
Speaker 1: let go of the balloon, that potential energy converts into
Speaker 1: kinetic energy, the energy of movement. You didn't create or
Speaker 1: destroy energy here, it just changed forms. So if you
Speaker 1: have what you claim to be a perpetual motion machine
Speaker 1: and you set it in motion, the energy you gave
Speaker 1: that machine and that initial point should sustain it forever
Speaker 1: and it would never have that initial energy change form
Speaker 1: into some other type of energy that could then escape
Speaker 1: the system and show a net energy loss for the
Speaker 1: system itself. Remember, the energy is not being destroyed, but
Speaker 1: it can be lost in another form. This means that
Speaker 1: such a machine could not have any parts that had
Speaker 1: any contact with one another, which would make it a
Speaker 1: really strange machine. And that's because friction would be a
Speaker 1: constant means for energy to convert from one form to
Speaker 1: another form, in this case kinetic energy, the energy of
Speaker 1: movement into heat. Friction is the resistance surfaces have regarding
Speaker 1: moving against each other. So if the machine has any
Speaker 1: moving parts at all, those parts will be encountering friction,
Speaker 1: which means some of that moving energy will be converted
Speaker 1: to heat and thus escape the system. So the overall
Speaker 1: system of the machine itself will have a net loss
Speaker 1: of energy. There will be less energy to keep it going,
Speaker 1: which means gradually it will slow down and ultimately just stop.
Speaker 1: As a result, it might take a long time if
Speaker 1: the machine is particularly well designed, but it will eventually happen.
Speaker 1: You would need some form of energy input to keep
Speaker 1: things going on occasion, kind of like a little push.
Speaker 1: Imagine that you've got a a swing like a rope
Speaker 1: with a higher at the end of it. No one's
Speaker 1: in it right now. You would have to give that
Speaker 1: tire a little push every now and then to keep
Speaker 1: it swinging, otherwise it will eventually stop. But that means
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have a perpetual motion machine. There are other
Speaker 1: factors that similarly make perpetual motion impossible. That the machine
Speaker 1: makes any sort of sound, then some of the energy
Speaker 1: of operation is going into creating the vibrations that make sound.
Speaker 1: Sound itself is energy, it's kinetic energy, So that would
Speaker 1: mean the machine as a whole would be losing energy
Speaker 1: through that sound. A machine operating inside an atmosphere has
Speaker 1: to overcome the friction of moving through air and the
Speaker 1: list goes on. Moreover, if we could build a perpetual
Speaker 1: motion machine, we'd be able to harness it for energy,
Speaker 1: but only up to whatever the starting initial energy was
Speaker 1: to get it moving in the first place. Because again,
Speaker 1: energy cannot be created. We can build devices that can
Speaker 1: harness other forms of energy and convert that energy and
Speaker 1: to say electricity, But these are not perpetual motion or
Speaker 1: free energy machines. These machines are just collecting and converting
Speaker 1: energy that's already in the system. We're already present, so
Speaker 1: they're not making anything. Reneffer, however, claimed to have built
Speaker 1: a perpetual motion machine that could potentially serve as a
Speaker 1: free energy generator. Now, if true, this would have been
Speaker 1: an astonishing discovery. Not only would our understanding of the
Speaker 1: universe be proven to be wrong, but we would also
Speaker 1: have access to an inexhaustible supply of energy. Red Effort
Speaker 1: showed off what he said was a working model of
Speaker 1: his design in Philadelphia, and he was asking for money
Speaker 1: to fund the construction of a larger, practical version of
Speaker 1: his design. A group of inspectors from the city came
Speaker 1: out to check out how this thing worked, and they
Speaker 1: noticed something hinky was going on, even though red Haifer
Speaker 1: was doing his best to run interference and prevent anyone
Speaker 1: from getting too close a look at the machine. The
Speaker 1: gears of the device, which was supposedly powering a second machine,
Speaker 1: were worn down in such a way that it was
Speaker 1: pretty clear that it was actually the second machine that
Speaker 1: was providing the energy to turn the quote unquote perpetual
Speaker 1: motion machine, not the other way around. So if we
Speaker 1: were talking about cars, this would be like discovering that
Speaker 1: the wheels turning were causing the pistons of the engine
Speaker 1: to reciprocate in their cylinders. It's it's going the opposite way.
Speaker 1: So the investigators then hired a local engineer named Isaiah
Speaker 1: Lucas to build a similar device, using a secondary machine
Speaker 1: to provide power to what would be the perpetual motion
Speaker 1: type machine, and then they showed it to red Haifer,
Speaker 1: who saw that the jig was up and he hoofted
Speaker 1: out of town to New York City. He tried to
Speaker 1: pull essentially the same scam there, this time using a
Speaker 1: machine that was secretly powered by a hand crank in
Speaker 1: a secret room on the other side of the wall. Uh,
Speaker 1: technically it was just a feller sitting there with a
Speaker 1: hand crank in one hand and a sandwich in the other,
Speaker 1: providing the work to turn this machine. Robert Fulton, a
Speaker 1: mechanical engineer of great renown, exposed the whole device as
Speaker 1: a fraud when he pulled apart some boards on the
Speaker 1: wall and revealed the man sitting there cranking away and
Speaker 1: Red Heifer fled again. Records of what happened next are sketchy.
Speaker 1: It seems he might have tried to pull the Sang
Speaker 1: Dang scheme in Philadelphia again a bit later, but he
Speaker 1: disappeared from the historical record after reportedly refusing to demonstrate
Speaker 1: his new device. When we come back, I'll compare this
Speaker 1: to what I mentioned before a Tharaos before we chat
Speaker 1: about other concerns regarding the black box problem. But first
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Okay, So, Saraos this is
Speaker 1: the biomedical technology company that was founded by Elizabeth Holmes,
Speaker 1: and she is currently awaiting a trial on charges of
Speaker 1: federal fraud in the United States. The trial was supposed
Speaker 1: to begin in August twenty twenty, but has since been
Speaker 1: delayed until one due to COVID nineteen. Now, the pitch
Speaker 1: for Tharaos was really really alluring. What if engineers could
Speaker 1: make a machine capable of testing a single droplet of
Speaker 1: blood for more than one hundred possible illnesses and conditions,
Speaker 1: So rather than going through multiple blood draws and tests
Speaker 1: to try and figure out what's wrong, you could get
Speaker 1: an answer based off one little pin prick within a
Speaker 1: couple of hours. Maybe you would even be able to
Speaker 1: buy a theorophn nos machine for your home, kind of
Speaker 1: like a desktop printer, and that would allow you to
Speaker 1: do a quick blood test at a moment's notice. Maybe
Speaker 1: you would get a heads up about something you should
Speaker 1: talk to your doctor about, preventing tragedy. In the process,
Speaker 1: you might learn that with some changes in your lifestyle,
Speaker 1: you could improve your overall health or stave off various illnesses.
Speaker 1: It would democratize medicine, giving the average person more control
Speaker 1: and knowledge about their own health and giving them a
Speaker 1: better starter point for conversations with their doctors. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great goal. It's a fantastic sales pitch, and
Speaker 1: it did get homes and theorophness a lot of interested
Speaker 1: investors who really wanted to tap into this because not
Speaker 1: only is it something that you would want for yourself.
Speaker 1: You could easily see that if this is possible, that
Speaker 1: business is going to be like the next Apple. It
Speaker 1: will become a trillion dollar company. Something that power full
Speaker 1: would undoubtedly become a powerhouse. Now I've done full episodes
Speaker 1: about the Ainos and how it fell apart because spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened. The technology just didn't work. But
Speaker 1: I think a lot of what happened with Aaronis was
Speaker 1: largely dependent upon naivete ignorance and wishful thinking. Our technology
Speaker 1: can do some pretty astounding stuff, right, I mean if
Speaker 1: you had told me in two thousand that by the
Speaker 1: end of the decade I would be carrying around a
Speaker 1: device capable of really harnessing the power of the Internet
Speaker 1: in my pocket and I would have access to it
Speaker 1: all the time, I would have thought you were bonkers.
Speaker 1: So if technology can do incredible things like that, why
Speaker 1: can't it do something equally incredible with blood tests. The
Speaker 1: idea is that, well, we're already seeing this amazing stuff happen,
Speaker 1: why isn't this other amazing thing possible? And that is
Speaker 1: dangerous thinking. It a weights all technological advances and developments,
Speaker 1: and that's just not how reality works Moore's law, the
Speaker 1: observation that generally speaking, computational power doubles every two years
Speaker 1: has really helped fuel a misunderstanding about technology in general.
Speaker 1: We extend that same crazy growth to all sorts of
Speaker 1: fields and technology when that doesn't actually apply, and it
Speaker 1: gives us the motivation to fool ourselves into thinking that
Speaker 1: the impossible is actually possible. That I think is what
Speaker 1: happened with Sarah. No. Nos, Now, I'm not saying Holmes
Speaker 1: set out to deceive people. I don't know what she
Speaker 1: really believed was possible, but based on what I've read
Speaker 1: and seen and listened to, to me, it sounds like
Speaker 1: she figured there was at least a decent chance her
Speaker 1: vision would become possible, and so a lot of Saraphnoss activities,
Speaker 1: in personal opinion, appeared to have been meant to stall
Speaker 1: for time while engineers were working on very hard problems
Speaker 1: to make the blood testing device work as intended. The
Speaker 1: further into the process, the more of the company had
Speaker 1: to spin wheels to make it seem like it was
Speaker 1: making more progress than it actually was. The company had
Speaker 1: raised an enormous amount of money from the investors, so
Speaker 1: they were beholden to them. They had also secured agreements
Speaker 1: with drug store chains to provide services to customers, so
Speaker 1: they needed to perform a service. It had to show progress,
Speaker 1: even if behind the scenes things had actually stalled out.
Speaker 1: On top of that, you also have the reports of
Speaker 1: executives like Holmes herself living the high life and really
Speaker 1: enjoying incredible benefits of wealth because of the enormous investment
Speaker 1: into the company. So that plays a part two therein
Speaker 1: knows as operations were effectively a black box to the
Speaker 1: outside world. It was meant to missdirect and give the
Speaker 1: implication that things were working fine behind the scenes, while
Speaker 1: the people who were actually there were trying to keep
Speaker 1: up the illusion while simultaneously attempting to solve what appeared
Speaker 1: to be impossible problems. At some point, based on how
Speaker 1: things unfolded, I would say that executives that THEOS appeared
Speaker 1: to be perpetrating a scam, not just you know, trying
Speaker 1: to maintain an illusion while getting things to work. They
Speaker 1: were actively scamming people. In my opinion, maybe they were
Speaker 1: still holding out hope that it would ultimately work out,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't change that it was a classic case
Speaker 1: of smoke and mirrors to hide what was really happening,
Speaker 1: such as using existing blood testing technology from other companies
Speaker 1: in order to run tests while claiming that the results
Speaker 1: were coming from actual THEOS devices. But again, this is
Speaker 1: all my own opinion based on what I've seen and
Speaker 1: read about the subject. A court will have to determine
Speaker 1: whether or not Homes and other is actually committed fraud.
Speaker 1: A lot of the technology we rely upon in our
Speaker 1: day to day lives is complicated stuff, and there are
Speaker 1: limited hours in the day. It's a bit much to
Speaker 1: ask anyone to become an expert on all things tech
Speaker 1: to figure out exactly how they work. Tech is also
Speaker 1: becoming more and more specialized, so you might become an
Speaker 1: expert in one area of technology and be completely ignorant
Speaker 1: of another. That's not unusual because it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of time to become an expert at specific areas of tech.
Speaker 1: These days, they've become so specialized. But by overlooking the
Speaker 1: how we can make ourselves vulnerable to bad actors out
Speaker 1: there when it comes to technology. Maybe they are actively
Speaker 1: trying to pull the wool over our eyes, or maybe
Speaker 1: they're just simply misguided and they misunderstand how stuff works.
Speaker 1: But either way, our own ignorance of how tech does
Speaker 1: and what it does, and the limitations that we all
Speaker 1: face based on, you know, the fundamental laws of the
Speaker 1: universe as we understand them, that all makes us potential
Speaker 1: marks or targets. That's where critical thinking comes in and
Speaker 1: plays a part. Knowing to ask questions and to critically
Speaker 1: examine the answers, and to ask follow up questions, and
Speaker 1: to not accept claims at face value are all important traits. Now,
Speaker 1: we do have to be careful not to go so
Speaker 1: far as to embrace denialism. If we are confronted with
Speaker 1: compelling evidence that supports the claim, we need to be
Speaker 1: ready to accept that claim. I'm not advocating for you
Speaker 1: guys to just go out there and say that any
Speaker 1: and every claim is just bogus. That's not the point.
Speaker 1: I'll close this out by talking about something we're seeing
Speaker 1: unfold in real time around us, and that involves machine
Speaker 1: learning and AI systems. Now, if you follow the circles
Speaker 1: that report on this kind of stuff, you will occasionally
Speaker 1: see calls for transparency. Those calls are to urge people
Speaker 1: who are designing these machine learning systems and AI systems
Speaker 1: to show their work, as it were, and to have
Speaker 1: the systems themselves show their work. It's not enough to
Speaker 1: create a system that can perform a task like image
Speaker 1: recognition and then give us results. We need to know
Speaker 1: how the system came to those conclusions that it produced.
Speaker 1: We need this in order to check for stuff like biases,
Speaker 1: which is a serious issue in artificial intelligence. Honestly, it's
Speaker 1: a really big problem for tech in general, but we're
Speaker 1: really seeing it play out rather spectacularly in AI. Now
Speaker 1: i'll give you an example that I've already alluded to,
Speaker 1: facial recognition technology. The U s National Institute of Standards
Speaker 1: and Technology conducted an investigation in twenty nineteen into facial
Speaker 1: recognition technologies, and it found that algorithms were pretty darn
Speaker 1: good at identifying Caucasian faces, but if they were analyzing
Speaker 1: a black or an Asian face, they were are less accurate,
Speaker 1: sometimes one times more likely to falsely identify somebody based
Speaker 1: on an image. The worst error rates involved identifying Native Americans.
Speaker 1: So let's let that sink in, because when we talk
Speaker 1: about issues like systemic racism, we sometimes forget about how
Speaker 1: that can manifest in ways that aren't as intuitive or
Speaker 1: obvious as the really overt stuff. We live in a
Speaker 1: world that has cameras all over the place. Surveillance is
Speaker 1: a real thing that's going on all the time. Police
Speaker 1: and other law enforcement agencies rely heavily on facial recognition
Speaker 1: algorithms to identify suspects and to search for people of interest,
Speaker 1: and if those algorithms have a low rate of reliability
Speaker 1: for different ethnicities, a disproportionate number of people who have
Speaker 1: no connection to any investigation are going to be singled
Speaker 1: out by mistake by these algorithms. Lives can be disrupted,
Speaker 1: careers can be ruined, relationships hurt all because a computer
Speaker 1: program can't tell the difference between two different faces. That
Speaker 1: is a serious problem, and it points to a couple
Speaker 1: of things. One of the big ones is a lack
Speaker 1: of diversity on the design side of things. We've seen
Speaker 1: this with tech for a long time. There is a
Speaker 1: really critical diversity issue going on with technology. The people
Speaker 1: who are building algorithms and training machine learning systems are
Speaker 1: largely failing to do so in a way that can
Speaker 1: be equally applicable across different ethnicities. Meanwhile, organizations like the
Speaker 1: American Civil Liberties Union are calling upon law enforcement agencies
Speaker 1: to stop relying on technology like this entirely pointing out
Speaker 1: that the potential for harm to befall innocent people outweighs
Speaker 1: the benefits of using the tech to catch, you know, criminals.
Speaker 1: A machine learning system trained to do something like identify
Speaker 1: people based on their faces needs to be transparent so
Speaker 1: that when a bias becomes evident, engineers can go back
Speaker 1: to the machine learning system and look and see where
Speaker 1: it went wrong, and then train it to eliminate the bias.
Speaker 1: Without transparency, it can be hard or impossible to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly where things are going wrong within the system. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: real people in the real world are suffering the consequences. Now,
Speaker 1: if we extend this outward and we look into a
Speaker 1: future where artificial intelligence is undoubtedly going to play a
Speaker 1: critical part in our day to day experiences, we see
Speaker 1: how we need to avoid these black box situations. We
Speaker 1: need to understand why a system will generate a particular
Speaker 1: output given specific inputs. We've got to be able to
Speaker 1: check the systems to be certain they are coming to
Speaker 1: the right conclusions. Artificial intelligence has enormous potential to all
Speaker 1: mean how we go about everything from running errands to
Speaker 1: performing our jobs, but we need to be certain that
Speaker 1: the guidance we receive is dependable. That's the right course
Speaker 1: of action, And so I hope this episode has really
Speaker 1: driven home how it's important for us to hold technology
Speaker 1: up to a critical view. It's not that technology is
Speaker 1: inherently good or bad, or that people are specifically acting
Speaker 1: in an ethical or unethical way, but rather that without
Speaker 1: using critical thinking, we can't be certain if what we're
Speaker 1: relying upon is actually reliable or not. I also urge,
Speaker 1: as always that we pair compassion with critical thinking. I
Speaker 1: think there's a tendency for us to kind of assign
Speaker 1: blame and intent when things go wrong, and sometimes that
Speaker 1: is appropriate, but I would argue that we shouldn't jump
Speaker 1: to that conclusion right off the bat. Sometimes people just
Speaker 1: bad choices, or they are misinterpreting things, but they don't
Speaker 1: have any intent to mislead. So while I do advocate
Speaker 1: that we use critical thinking as much as possible, let's
Speaker 1: be decent, nice human beings whenever we do that. If
Speaker 1: it turns out someone is truly being unethical and trying
Speaker 1: to deceive others, that's obviously a different story. But before
Speaker 1: you know for sure, I say we employ that compassion,
Speaker 1: and hopefully we are able to solve these problems before
Speaker 1: they have these real world impacts, because the consequences of
Speaker 1: those are dramatic and terrible and avoidable if we use
Speaker 1: critical thinking. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Will
Speaker 1: be back with other new episodes that will probably touch
Speaker 1: on critical thinking, but they won't be, you know, completely
Speaker 1: built around the concept. But if you guys have suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics I should tackle in tech Stuff, whether
Speaker 1: it's a company, a trend, a personality and tech a
Speaker 1: specific technology you want to know how it works, anything
Speaker 1: like that, let me know. Send me a message on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from I Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
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