Is IT Reliable?

Every engineering discipline has gone through a process of evolution. There have been important changes to the way cars, buildings and dams have been engineered over time, and all these changes have made things better. Through the course of this evolution, some massive blunders have been committed. The cases of poor ship navigation systems that brought down the titanic, poor reactor design that caused Chernobyl or improper spaceship design that caused the Columbia space shuttle problem show that no engineering discipline is perfect, and there are some conditions under which failure will occur. What this meant for the world of engineering was that there needed to be a renewed and vigorous attempt at reducing the chances of failure. And this was done, by pouring billions of dollars into finding solutions to these problems.
As a Computer Engineer, I have seen numerous folk segregate the field of Computer Engineering from the rest of the Engineering disciplines. I will vouch say that Engineering of IT and Computer Systems is very similar to any of the other Engineering fields. We did not decrease the investments in ship building because of titanic. Instead, we invested more, to try and build a safe and secure shipping industry. ( I love the ice breakers of today, they are such mean and strong machines, and they look so awesome when they crush the ice J
We have to realize the importance of the different pieces of technology that we have been blessed with. It’s a cost benefit analysis, and although it may sound crude, an engineering problem that is discovered is very likely a problem will be solved. I think the rapidity with which strides have been made in the area of Computer Technology is a tribute to the genius of humans. Once we are able to appreciate the usefulness of IT in modern life, and our ability to solve complex problems, I think we will be able to see that with enough focus in terms of human and non-human resources, we will be able to overcome the challenges that face the Industry.