“‘What’s wrong with her?’ ‘Her leg hurts after running six miles. Who knows, it could be anything.’” – House, M.D.”
Humanity has a quirk of seeing one person being successful in a specific area, then deciding en masse that that is the only way to achieve success. Currently, the way to success is to be technically proficient. You must understand complex IT situations and be able to spout enough jargon to sound like any adult in a Charlie Brown cartoon. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard a variation of the phrase “This technological advancement is infallible; it is the way of the future.[1]” Meanwhile, those that understand technology from a strategic or creative viewpoint (and surprisingly, can understand its foibles if one relies too heavily on one thing to “save the world) are left behind with supposedly outdated thinking. Who needs creativity when we have technology?
And yet this year alone, we have had two major events that have impacted the United States in ways that should have been dealt with before they exploded onto the front pages of the major news sites: SolarWinds and the Colonial Pipeline attack. With the Colonial Pipeline attack in particular, one would have thought that the many technical people there could have blocked a simple ransomware attack, right? According to Mike Chapple, a professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, “[the] attacks were extremely sophisticated and they were able to defeat some pretty sophisticated security controls, or the right degree of security controls weren’t in place[2].” Chapple also warned that “systems that control pipelines should not be connected to the internet and vulnerable to cyber intrusions.” What were they thinking?
Turns out, they might not be, and through no conscious fault of their own. This can boil itself down to the concept of “educated incapacity,” or the idea of being so steeped in a particular area that you tend to miss the simple things. To give an example: If you’re a parent, you know you need to teach your kid how to drive. You have been driving for decades, and everything is second nature. However, your kid may not know that there’s a technique to pressing on the gas to speed up; if you only say “You can go faster,” they may end up flooring it and crashing the car into a nearby berm[3]. You become frustrated, because you know how to go faster, and your kid is frustrated, because they did not know how to go faster without stepping on the gas with abandon.
The more we add technology to things that don’t really need it or use technology to replace manual labor of any sort, the more this incapacitation tends to grow. When events like this pipeline occur, things shut down, literally. Gas stations across the East Coast have either closed, or have lines as long as the street can take them. Prices have gone over $3 a gallon. I’m starting to wonder if I can make extra money from selling the gas canister in my garage that I use for the lawn mower[4].
My point is that if you are only investing in the technical know-how to do, you won’t have enough people to ask the potential “stupid questions” that could highlight weaknesses in a system or a process. I don’t need to know how to code to know that we need to constantly keep our software up to date. I don’t need to be able to read C++ to know that hackers are thinking creatively about how to get into our systems far more than we are thinking of creative solutions on how to stop them. And I certainly don’t need to know how to repair a motherboard to know that the increased use of AI is problematic in the sense of how many problems it creates versus solves[5]. Relying on only those who have technical skills will constantly put us in a state of trying to catch up to the bad actors that are having an absolute party with our critical infrastructure. Our educated incapacity ensures that the critical infrastructures vital to the sustainment of the United States are an amusement park to hackers of all types[6].
A recent report about the US Intel’s Threat Assessment concluded that “[what’s] missing from this assessment, however, is the much more difficult undertaking of anticipating surprise…when we don’t practice the art of strategic foresight, we may leave ourselves vulnerable to strategic blind spots[7].” A strategic foresight practitioner allows for someone who may not know the ins and outs of IT, but can understand enough to ask the questions and ponder the surprises that could cripple the infrastructure of the country. These people can also ask the supposedly “stupid questions” that could lead to great innovations. But if you’re looking for someone who thinks this way and has extensive coding experience and a secret clearance…good luck, because you’re more likely to find out who killed Jimmy Hoffa.
There isn’t only one path to success. The inspiration for technical advancements has often come from the arts, and many creative pieces have been inspired by technology. But should we eliminate the need for creative thought processes for only the technical side? And relying on only technology for everything? Well, if the power goes out, I hope you have a backup plan for staying sane, particularly when the mob breaks loose and panic spreads. Your technical folks are good at what they do, but they can’t see the forest for the trees. For the sake of all things good, hire someone with creative, strategic foresight skills that can find the nuances of the woods that your coders and IT groups may dismiss.
[1] Cue expensive light show behind said person.
[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/05/08/gasoline-pipeline-shutdown-colonial-pipeline-alpharetta-georgia-cyberattack/5003760001/
[3] Again, may or may not be based on a true story. Sorry Mom.
[4] Side hustle life, apparently.
[5] Automatic captioning, the judicial system’s racial profiling, eliminating job candidates for no good reason, I could go on.
[6] Remember Pleasure Island from Pinocchio? Yeah, that kind of amusement park. Except these hackers are making asses out of us.
[7] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/fasttake-whats-missing-from-us-intels-2021-threat-assessment/ (Also, thanks Maeve.)
formthefuture.org 