Interesting read about the Therac-25
Therac-25 is a tragic indcident that occured in the late 90s. Dealing with both the medical and technical field, the Therac-25 was a state-of-the-art machine that provided radiation therapy to patients. However, this machine had one major flaw. The software behind this machine caused several accidents, cases where patients were given too much radiation and died soon afterwards. This device emphasizes the safety of software, especially ones that directly deals with people's safety. The overal design for the software was faulty and was soon recalled by reviewed by the FDA. Following this incident, there is more focus on safe software and accountability.
Reading the article, I found that Nissenbaum's analysis of the situation and of the barriers to accountability were all very apt. Just as the system of accountability failed for the Therac-25 through problems such as too many hands and computers as scapegoats, modern day projects are threatened by the same problems even decades later. Naturally, with various collaborative coding tools of the modern day, such as Git and Github, we have taken great steps towards solving these problems. I believe, though, that the Therac-25 was a strong enough example of what could go wrong that we aught to continue to stay vigilant for the problems that caused those malfunctions.